CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · People & Ideas

Yves Meyer

French mathematician

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 28, 2026
Entity authorityQ574597
Source-derived summary

Yves F. Meyer (French: [mɛjɛʁ]; born 19 July 1939) is a French mathematician. He is among the progenitors of wavelet theory, having proposed the Meyer wavelet. Meyer was awarded the Abel Prize in 2017.

Biography

Born in Paris into a Jewish family, Yves Meyer studied at the Lycée Carnot in Tunis; he won the French General Student Competition (Concours Général) in Mathematics, and was placed first in the entrance examination for the École Normale Supérieure in 1957. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1966, under the supervision of Jean-Pierre Kahane. The Mexican historian Jean Meyer is his cousin.

Yves Meyer taught at the Prytanée national militaire during his military service (1960–1963), then was a teaching assistant at the Université de Strasbourg (1963–1966), a professor at Université Paris-Sud (1966–1980), a professor at École Polytechnique (1980–1986), a professor at Université Paris-Dauphine (1985–1995), a senior researcher at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) (1995–1999), an invited professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers (2000), a professor at École Normale Supérieure de Cachan (1999–2003), and has been a professor emeritus at Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan since 2004.

He was awarded the 2010 Gauss Prize for fundamental contributions to number theory, operator theory and harmonic analysis, and his pivotal role in the development of wavelets and multiresolution analysis. He also received the 2017 Abel Prize "for his pivotal role in the development of the mathematical theory of wavelets."

Publications

Meyer, Yves (1970). Nombres de Pisot, nombres de Salem, et analyse harmonique (in French).

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Yves Meyer” as french mathematician. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Yves, Meyer and French.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1939, 2017, 1957, 1966—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1939-07-19. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Yves, Meyer and French providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Yves Meyer”, the useful work is to connect “french mathematician” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q574597. VIAF identifies the subject as 9903353. The Library of Congress control number is n85039175. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1939, 2017, 1957 and 1966.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Yves Meyer”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Yves Meyer primary sources, Yves Meyer archive and Yves research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Yves Meyer”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Yves Meyer” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.