Preface for the Special Issue Honoring Laurent Véron



Laurent Véron was born on February 26th 1949 at Brazzaville, Congo. At that time, Congo was one of the four territories of the French Equatorial Africa, together with Gabon, Tchad and Oubangui-Chari, presently the Center African Republic. His father came to Brazzaville as a Mission Manager in Charge of the Finances for the General Governor of the French Equatorial Africa. Laurent came to France by the first time when he was two years old. Once back in France his father, who was Finances Inspector, occupied several administrative positions closely related to his qualification. In 1954 he took part of the government of Pierre Mendès France as Director of Cabinet of several Ministries. After the fall of Mendès France, he reintegrated the high administration as General Inspector of Finances, and never had any other political involvement.

His family tradition was center-left, in French, radical-socialist, a party which is neither radical nor socialist but has strong roots in the South-West of France. In particular, during the Second World War, since the father of Laurent was taken prisoner in Germany, his grand-father and mother established an escaping road from France to Spain for saving the Jewish people hunted by the Nazis. In recognition, they both received the medal of Righteous among the Nations for their action. Laurent completed his High School studies at the Lycées Pasteur (Neuilly sur Seine) and Louis le Grand (Paris). These studies, shared between sciences and humanities, explain the exceptional humanistic background of Laurent. Laurent was very much tempted to become historian or archeologist as well as astronomer or mathematician. His existential circumstances pushed him finally to become Mathematician. That he took the right decision is evident by the fact that this special issue gives a tribute to his many mathematical achievements during his first 50 years of intensive work on Nonlinear PDEs.

Laurent got his Bachelor on Elementary Mathematics on 1967 and completed his Degree in Mathematical Sciences on February 1970. He got his Aggregation in Mathematical Sciences in 1972. He defended his “Doctorat d’État ès Sciences” at Paris 6 on June 23rd 1980, with a first thesis supervised by H. Brezis entitled “Comportement asymptotique et singularitées des solutions d’équations aux derivées partielles non linéaires”, and a second thesis under the direction of Y. Choquet-Bruhat entitled “Spectre du Laplacien et longueur des géodesiques périodiques”. Besides H. Brézis, who integrated the judging Committee as his main thesis adviser, and Y. Choquet-Bruhat, as the second thesis adviser, also took part in the judging Committee L. Schwartz, as President, as well as Ph. Benilan, M. Hervé and J. Robert, some of the glories of the French Mathematics of the Second half of the 20th Century. Since then, Laurent himself has advised over 20 Doctoral Thesis. Among his many honors, he was awarded “Grand Prix SERVANT” of the Academy of Sciences of Paris on 2006 and “Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Mérite” since November 15th, 2010.

J. López-Gómez met Laurent by the first time on December 1981, during the celebration of the first French-Spanish colloquium on Nonlinear PDEs held at Madrid. At that time, the editor was 22 years old and had just graduated from Complutense University, while Laurent was 32. Laurent was, together with H. Brézis and Ph. Benilan, one of the speakers who impressed more to the editor, by their vibrant, brilliant and elegant mathematics. They met again during the Second Franco-Spanish colloquium held at Paris on December 1985, where Laurent spoke on “Singularities of some degenerate elliptic equations”. Many years later, Laurent has taken part in some judging Committees of several doctoral students of the editor who elaborated their Doctoral Thesis on large solutions of semilinear elliptic equations, a field where Laurent has contributed with some of the most pioneering and sharp available results. In these occasions, it has been a great pleasure for the editor not only discussing mathematics with Laurent but also chatting about poetry, literature, music and even international politics! Laurent is an extremely cultivated person. It is a great pleasure to find someone with whom you can discuss about the celebrated violin concerto of Sibelius or the first violin concerto of Shostakovich! Or discover with him that Victor Hugo was not only an exceptional novelist, but a great poet, born on February 26th 1802, just 147 years before him. That Laurent is an exceptional friend of his friends is corroborated by the tremendous success of this special volume, where most of his closest friends and colleagues have contributed with top level papers.

This special issue is indebted with the exceptional work of the experts who have taken part in the reviewing process of the papers published in it. The editorial team is glad to thank to M. del Pino, M. Escobedo, V. Ferone, C. Kenig, M. Marcus, L. Mari, G. Porru, V. Radulescu, T. Suzuki, G. Toscani and E. Vitillaro for their highly professional work. The success of this volume is the success of all of them too!

Julián López-GómezPatrizia Pucci