Léo Ramos Chaves / Pesquisa FAPESPBorn in Minas Gerais in 1940, Palis was president of the ABC, the IMU, and the TWASLéo Ramos Chaves / Pesquisa FAPESP
Mathematician Jacob Palis was passionate about creating opportunities for young scientists from developing countries. He wanted to train them and encourage them to study in order to establish a solid foundation of future generations prepared to lead research, formulate public policies, and promote science. As a young man, he himself received funding to study abroad, before returning to Brazil and extending the frontiers of Brazilian mathematics. His work was internationally renowned and left a lasting legacy. Palis, who had been in hospital since March, died in Rio de Janeiro on May 7, aged 85, from an undisclosed cause.
Born in Uberaba, Minas Gerais, to a Lebanese father and a Syrian mother, Palis moved to Rio de Janeiro at the age of 16 to study engineering, influenced by his brother, an engineer at what was then the University of Brazil and is now the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), where he scored highest among all applicants on the entrance exam. He graduated in 1962, winning an award for being the university’s best student at the time. “I thought that when I finished engineering I would study more mathematics and physics and then return to engineering, but with a much stronger level of education. This ‘return’ never happened,” he said in an interview with Pesquisa FAPESP in 2009. In the early 1960s, he attended a series of weekend seminars at Brazil’s Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IMPA), where he would eventually pursue his career.
His interest in mathematics led him to the University of California, Berkeley, where he completed his master’s and PhD between 1964 and 1968. He was supervised by American mathematician Stephen Smale, who in 1966 won the Fields Medal, the most prestigious prize in mathematics, for his work on topological spaces in higher dimensions, a subfield of geometry that investigates complex structures with more than three dimensions. “Jacob was a great leader in mathematics. We became good friends and I will miss him dearly,” Smale, 95, said in a statement emailed to Pesquisa FAPESP.
Palis returned to Brazil in 1968, having defended a doctoral thesis on dynamic systems, a field in which he was well known. Dynamic systems evolve over time, based on a rule that describes the transition from one moment to the next. Although the rule can be very simple, in the long term it can lead to the emergence of highly complex behaviors, some of them described as chaotic. “As a dynamic system evolves and small inaccuracies in its variables arise, the changes in the system become greater and greater,” explains Marcelo Viana, a former student of Palis’s and current director of the IMPA.
Studies of the chaotic behavior that can emerge in dynamic systems over time led to the creation of methods now used to explain complex phenomena in many fields, such as chemistry (reactions and industrial processes) and physics (turbulence, phase transition, and optical phenomena).
Palis’s contributions flowed in several directions. One was an understanding of the mathematical role of fractals: geometric figures with patterns that infinitely repeat in smaller and larger scales. He was also an expert in bifurcation theory, an area of dynamic systems concerned with turbulence or variables that alter the behavior of a system that previously had an ordered flow. For example, a liquid that initially flows smoothly through a tube but begins to move more turbulently when the temperature increases.
He earned various forms of recognition over the course of his career. His résumé includes at least two dozen medals and awards from Brazilian and foreign organizations, including Italy’s Balzan Prize in 2010 (he was the first Brazilian to ever win); the 2018 Henrique Morize Medal, awarded by the Brazilian Academy of Sciences (ABC); and the 2019 Spirit of Abdus Salam Award, which recognizes work carried out to promote science in developing countries.
He specialized in the field of dynamic systems, which evolve over time and whose transitions follow a certain rule
At the same time as he was doing research, Palis pushed for policies that would internationalize Brazilian science. He did this through leadership positions at various organizations. He was president of the Brazilian Mathematical Society (1979–1981) and vice president of the Brazilian Society for the Advancement of Science (SBPC, 1993–1996). He was director of the IMPA (1993–2003) and president of the ABC (2007–2016), the International Mathematical Union (IMU, 1999–2002), and the World Academy of Sciences (TWAS, 2007–2012).
“His legacy is more than that of a great scientist—he was an excellent manager,” says biomedical scientist Helena Nader, current president of the ABC. The two shared goals and commitments when he was in charge of the ABC. At that time, she was on the board of directors of the SBPC, first as vice president and then as president. “He saw Brazil as the right place to do science and he therefore also fought for education,” she adds.
According to Nader and Viana, the IMPA would not be what it is today without the work of Palis, who transformed it into a center of excellence capable of attracting talent from all over the world. A member of the IMU since 1954, Brazil joined the international association’s elite group 5 in 2018. The foundations for this achievement were laid over decades. Other renowned mathematicians from the IMPA also contributed, including Maurício Peixoto (1921–2019), Elon Lages Lima (1929–2017), and Manfredo do Carmo (1928–2018). “Jacob had a strategic and extremely ambitious vision of what the IMPA and Brazilian mathematics could achieve,” highlights Viana.
At the TWAS, Palis led efforts to improve postgraduate benefits. The number of research grants awarded to students during his two terms increased by 89%, with postgraduate grants rising by 102%. “His passion for improving postgraduate programs among countries in the Global South was remarkable. Under his leadership, scholarship programs prospered,” emphasizes former TWAS president Mohamed Hassan, from Sudan, in a tribute to Palis released by the organization after the news of his death.
On this front, Palis argued that more women should be encouraged to pursue science. “Life can be more complicated for women, as they often do more childcare. But they are by no means less talented,” he said in an interview published on the TWAS website in 2012. Venezuelan mathematician Cristina Lizana of the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA) was one of the beneficiaries of a doctoral scholarship during his term: “I am his academic granddaughter, because my supervisor, Enrique Pujals, was one of his students. Palis explained complex ideas in a simple way and was very accessible to students.”
Palis was one of the people responsible for the creation of the Mathematical Union of Latin America and the Caribbean (UMALCA) in 1995. Diverse political skills were needed to conquer these spaces. “He knew how to communicate with all governments, ministries, and funding agencies,” says Paolo Piccione, a mathematician from the Institute of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of São Paulo (IME-USP). The researcher recalls some of the most important issues for Palis during his presidency at the ABC: for 2% of GDP to be invested in science, technology, and innovation, for Brazil to compete with the richest countries, and for more funding for education.
In 2010, the mathematician retired from the IMPA but continued working as an emeritus researcher. He supervised 42 students, who themselves supervised 141 “academic grandchildren.” Palis leaves behind his wife, Suely Lima, his children Rebeca, Carlos Emanuel, and Laura, and five grandchildren.
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