Michel Broue

Exploited insights from both theoretical and empirical work to make conjectures unifying and deepening the representation theory of finite groups, generally proposing that many disparate objects or theories being studied are equivalent, some to much simpler theories. Already, Chuang and Rouquier (a former student of Broué), demonstrated one of these, Broué's Abelian defect group conjecture, to be correct for symmetric groups of all permutations of any given finite set. Their success will encourage further research with the possibility of applying the same methods of resolution elsewhere. As head of mathematical research at L'École normale supérieure, then head of the Institut Henri Poincaré, and as managing editor of the Journal of Algebra, he encouraged and extended the scope of interaction between mathematics and computer science.