Tribute to Jacques Tits

Jacques Tits, editor-in-chief of the Publications mathématiques de l’IHES from 1979 to 1999, passed away on December 5, 2021, at the age of 91.

After defending a thesis at the age of 20, he became a professor at the University of Brussels at the age of 24. He was then a professor at the University of Bonn and from 1973 to 1999 held the chair of “group theory” at the Collège de France.

Jacques Tits was one of the very first visitors to the Institute shortly after its creation. He was editor-in-chief of the Publications mathématiques de l’IHES for 20 years, from 1979 to 1999, playing a key role in the journal’s development.

Jacques Tits received many prestigious awards, including the Wolf Prize in 1993 and the Abel Prize in 2008. He became a member of the Académie des Sciences de Paris in 1979.

He marked the history of mathematics by his remarkable work in algebra and in particular the introduction of the concept of “Tits buildings”.

Read here the tribute to Jacques Tits co-written by Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, Michel Broué, Alain Connes and Étienne Ghys, published in Nature on 11 January 2022.