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Pierre-Emmanuel Caprace

Belgian mathematician; Professor of Mathematics at UCLouvain; geometric group theory and locally compact groups
Universite catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain) · Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium · academic
perso.uclouvain.be

Pierre-Emmanuel Caprace (b. 1981) is a Belgian mathematician specialising in geometric group theory, working on locally compact groups, Kac-Moody groups and buildings. He earned his PhD at the Universite libre de Bruxelles in 2005 under Bernhard Muehlherr, then was a Wiener-Anspach postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oxford (2006-2007). He is Professor of Mathematics at UCLouvain (IRMP) and was elected a full member of the Academie royale de Belgique in 2023. He won an IMO bronze medal for Belgium in 1999 and has received the Prix Eugene-Catalan (2005) and Prix Berwick (2015). He has supervised six doctoral students.

Belgian mathematician and professor at UCLouvain, born 1981. He represented Belgium at the 1999 International Mathematical Olympiad, winning a bronze medal. He completed his doctorate at the Universite libre de Bruxelles in 2005 on abstract homomorphisms of split Kac-Moody groups, supervised by Bernhard Muehlherr, followed by an Oxford postdoc (2006-2007). His research centres on geometric group theory, locally compact groups and buildings. He is a full member of the Academie royale de Belgique (2023).

Details
LocationLouvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
Company siteuclouvain.be
UniversityUniversite libre de Bruxelles
geometric group theorylocally compact groupsKac-Moody groupsbuildingsLie groupshuman rights of mathematiciansecological and social transition
Notes
  • Elected a full (titular) member of the Academie royale de Belgique in the Classe des Sciences in Sept 2023, alongside Kristin Bartik - recognition at the top of Belgian science.Sep 30, 2023
  • PhD (UBrussels, 2005) under Bernhard Muehlherr on split Kac-Moody groups, then an Oxford postdoc under Dan Segal (2006-07) - the Kac-Moody/buildings thread runs through his whole career.2005
  • Contact: published email [contact omitted] and phone [private detail omitted] on his homepage (email obfuscated by removing indeterminates).2026
  • Co-edited 'New Directions in Locally Compact Groups' (LMS Lecture Note Series 447, Cambridge UP) with Nicolas Monod, and a J. Algebra special volume in memory of Jacques Tits - positioning him as a field organiser.2017
  • Received the Prix Berwick (2015) and Prix Eugene-Catalan (2005); prizes plus academy membership mark him as a senior figure in Belgian mathematics.2015
  • Won a bronze medal representing Belgium at IMO 1999 (rank 202, 12 points), the childhood signal pointing to a future research mathematician; from the same Belgian team, Jeroen Demeyer also became a mathematician.Jul 1999
  • His homepage publicly states deep concern about alleged human-rights violations against mathematicians (Azat Miftakhov case) and organises GRICE meetings on ecological/social transition - a values signal beyond pure mathematics.2024
  • Has supervised six doctoral students across UCLouvain and Ljubljana (2013-2023), indicating an active research-group-building role, not just personal research.2023

Competition record

Belgium · IMO

1999 · Bronze · Rank 202