Marcel-Paul Schützenberger


Marcel-Paul "Marco" Schützenberger was a French mathematician and Doctor of Medicine. He worked in the fields of formal language, combinatorics, and information theory. In addition to his formal results in mathematics, he was "deeply involved in struggle against the votaries of Neo-Darwinism|Darwinism", a stance which has resulted in some mixed reactions from his peers and from critics of his stance on evolution. Several notable theorems and objects in mathematics as well as computer science bear his name. Paul Schützenberger was his great-grandfather.
In the late 1940s, he was briefly married to the psychologist Anne Ancelin Schützenberger.

Contributions to medicine and biology

Schützenberger's first doctorate, in medicine, was awarded in 1948 from the Faculté de Médecine de Paris. His doctoral thesis, on the statistical study of biological sex at birth, was distinguished by the Baron Larrey Prize from the French Academy of Medicine.
Biologist Jaques Besson, a co-author with Schützenberger on a biological topic, while noting that Schützenberger is perhaps most remembered for work in pure mathematical fields, credits him for likely being responsible for the introduction of statistical sequential analysis in French hospital practice.

Contributions to mathematics and linguistics

Schützenberger's second doctorate was awarded in 1953 from Université Paris III. This work, developed from earlier results is counted amongst the early influential French academic work in information theory. His later impact in both linguistics and combinatorics is reflected by two theorems in formal linguistics, and one in combinatorics. With Alain Lascoux, Schützenberger is credited with the foundation of the notion of the plactic monoid, reflected in the name of the combinatorial structure called by some the Lascoux–Schützenberger tree.
The mathematician Dominique Perrin credited Schützenberger with "deeply the theory of semigroups", and "deep results on rational functions and transducers," amongst other contributions to mathematics.

Offices, honors, and recognitions

;Professorships and other teaching
;National honors
; Posthumous recognitions
After his death, two journals in theoretical mathematics dedicated issues to Schützenberger's memory. He was commemorated in this manner by Theoretical Computer Science in 1998 and again by the International Journal of Algebra and Computation in 1999.
The mathematician David Berlinski provided this dedication in his 2000 book The Advent of The Algorithm: The Idea that Rules the World: À la mémoire de mon ami.. M. P. Schützenberger, 1921-1996.

Trivia

For the complete list of his papers, see:
The Complete Works of Marcel-Paul Schützenberger: