Bernard Helffer

Bernard Helffer (born 8 January 1949, Paris) is a French mathematician, specializing in partial differential equations, spectral theory, and mathematical physics.

Helffer studied from 1968 at the École Polytechnique and received in 1976 from the University of Paris-Sud his doctorate under Charles Goulaouic with dissertation Hypoellipticité pour des classes d'opérateurs pseudodifférentiels à caractéristiques multiples.

[1] From 1971 to 1978 he did research at CNRS, from 1978 to 1989 he was a professor at the University of Nantes, and then he was a professor at the University Paris-Sud (and simultaneously taught for five years at the École Normale Superieure).

His research in mathematical physics deals with statistical mechanics, liquid crystals, superconductivity, semiclassical approximation, and ground-state nodal lines in Laplace operators and Schrödinger operators.

From 2010 to 2012 he was the President of the Société mathématique de France.