Marcel-Paul Schützenberger (October 24 1920 - July 291996) was a French mathematician who worked in Combinatorics. The Chomsky–Schützenberger theorem (1963) states that any context-free language is a coding of a simple Dyck language. With his friend David Berlinski, Schützenberger worked on the mathematical critique of darwinism, asserting that random mutations need much more time than available to produce the speciation we observe.

Schützenberger became Doctor of Medicine in 1949, then Doctor of Mathematics in 1953 with a thesis on statistical applications of information theory. He subsequently was professor at University of Poitiers 1957-1963, director of research at the CNRS 1963-1964, professor at University of Paris 1964-1970, and professor at Denis Diderot from 1970 to his death. He further had stays at the MIT, and at the Harvard medical faculty 1961-1962.

Schützenberger was a member of the French Academy of Sciences and has received numerous other honors.

See also

• Chomsky–Schützenberger hierarchy

External links

• In Memoriam: Marcel-Paul Schützenberger
• The Miracles of Darwinism - interview with Marcel Schützenberger.
• List of publications
• Photos of Marcel Schützenberger – from Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach photo collection

French mathematicians | 1920 births | 1996 deaths | 20th century mathematicians | Combinatorists | creationists

Marcel Schützenberger | Marcel-Paul Schützenberger | Marcel Schützenberger