Message to NA-Digest  Publié dimanche 17 mai 2020

It is with deep sadness that I am announcing the passing away of   Francoise Chatelin on May 14, 2020.  Francoise, who was born   under the name Laborde, earned the French Aggregation in Mathematics (1963) while at the prestigious Ecole Normale     Superieure and then the ‘Doctorat d’Etat’ in 1971.  She began     her academic career at the Institut de Mathématiques Appliquées de Grenoble, which at the time had a world-renown team in numerical analysis under the leadership of Noel Gastinel, her Doctoral supervisor.  For a while Francoise worked on eigenvalue problems of linear operators. This effort culminated with the publication of her book “Spectral approximation of linearoperators” which appeared in 1983.  Francoise became well-known for her contributions on eigenvalue problems whether for infinite dimensional operators or matrices. She published two volumes on the computation of eigenvalues of matrices (one of them in French).  She later became interested in the impact of finite precision arithmetic on computations and a number of other topics including mathematics in economy, stability and chaos, and more recently the mathematics of life.  Francoise was a faculty  member at the University of Grenoble from 1971 to 1985, at theUniversité Paris-Dauphine from 1993 to 1996, and then at the university of Toulouse-1 from 1996 when she became emeritus. She was an associated member of CERFACS from its inception in 1987.  Her career also involved appointments with industry: IBM-Paris (1985-1991) and then for Thompson, a French company,(1992-1993).  Francoise was characterized by an insatiablecuriosity and openness to new ideas and by a strong independent thinking. Her students will remember her as a person who put immense efforts in helping those among them who were from different backgrounds. She was a champion in the cause of promoting female mathematicians and was quite successful in thisregard.  Francoise is survived by her two children Isabelle and Laurent Condolences to association@imag.fr who will transmit.

Professor Yousef Saad
University of Minneapolis

Messages internationaux reçus :

 Zhaojun Bai 
12:03 AM (22 hours ago)
to saad

Dear Yousef,

Hope this email finds you well.
It’s sad to learn Francoise Chatelin has passed away. I got to know Chatelin well back to early days of my career when we were visitors at IMA of your university in 1992. We met a few times afterward, including at CERFACS. Beside I learned so much from her work,
I have very fond memories of her as a friend from our conversation.
Thank you for the article you wrote on NADigest, I also hope it will appear in SIAM News.

Best wishes, Bai

—–Message d’origine—–

Walter Gander
Mon, May 18, 6:21 AM (2 days ago)
to Youcef

Dear Youcef,

I read your obituary of Francoise Chatelin with great sadness.  I have met her many years ago and I remember her saying that one cannot do good research without a rofessional helper at home. She was only three years older than I. I also remember Noel Gastinel, who produced a book with ALGOL Programs in which the key words had been francophonized!
I remember well these good French numerical analysts and will keep them in good memory.

Very best regards
– Walter Gander

—–Message d’origine—–

Howard Elman
Mon, May 18, 1:28 PM
to me

Yousef, I was sorry to hear the news about about Francoise Chatelin. I met her I believe only once, when Martin had asked me to organize the seminar at Yale when I was a postdoc there and I invited her.  I am not sure whether you were there yourself at the time; I’m pretty sure she came from Yorktown Heights.  She made a positive impression, treating a young host (me) very nicely.

I hope you are managing these days and are staying safe. Best,
Howard

—–Message d’origine—–

Michael Overton 
Mon, May 18, 12:19 AM (2 days ago)
to me

Dear Yousef,

I’m very sorry to hear this news. I knew her quite well over many years, and it was always stimulating to talk to her. Do you know the cause of death? Was it covid?
I hope you are doing well in this crazy new world. Best

Michael

—–Message d’origine—–

Paula M. Callaghan
Mon, May 18, 1:16 AM (2 days ago)
to me  

Hello, Yousef

I hope you and your family are well.  That used to be chit-chat and now itâ\200\231s a sincere declaration. I saw the lovely commemoration you wrote for NA Digest about FrancoiseChatelin. I hope I donâ\200\231t sound horribly crass in expressing concern that we get her royalty statements to the correct people, who seem to be her children. Do you think if I send an email to the address you list, they will pass along my request?  Do you know the name of an actual person to whom I can address the email?
Thanks so much for your help. Stay healthy!

Paula Callaghan
Acquisitions Editor, Books
Society for Industrial & Applied Mathematics
600 Market Street; Philadelphia, PA 19106

—–Message d’origine—–

Serge Petiton
Fri, May 15, 1:17 PM  
to saad  

Boujour Yousef,

Nouvelle bien triste de la disparission de Francoise Chatelin. Je l’ai vu a l’occasion du jury de la soutenance de jean-Baptiste, de ce qui sera donc son dernier doctorant, lâ\200\231an dernier a Toulouse. câ\200\231etait sympa et cela sâ\200\231etait tres bien passé. Elle etait deja fatigue.
J’ai eu Jean-Baptiste au telephone ce matin qui est resté avec la fille de françoise à l’hopital longtemps et je vois avec la directrice du Cerfacs s’ils organisent quelque chose. Tiens nous au courant si quelque chose est organisé aux usa.
J’espere que toi et tes proches allez bien dans ces temps complique, fais bien attention a toi. Des qu’il est possible de voyager a nouveau j espere que l’on pourra se voir quelque part.

Amicalement
Serge

—–Message d’origine—–

Stratis Gallopoulos
Sat, May 16, 6:55 AM (4 days ago)
to me

Dear Yousef, hello, I hope that you are well.

I learned yesterday from Nahid Ehmad about the passing of Francoise
Chatelin. I am truly sorry – my sincere condolences.
She was a remarkable scientist, a passionate person, and a fighter. Even though I had met her only a couple of times (UIUC, St Malo) I had immense indirect benefit from her, since you were her first student. It would also be unfair to forget Marie-Christine Brunet.
A personal anecdote: I am ashamed to say that when I first saw her book “Spectral Approximation ….” – I think I was still a graduate student and had not heard of her – at the Engineering Library, I thought the author was called Francois Chatelin – I guess I was blind sighted – somehow my brain could not associate a woman’s name with heavy math published in the prestigious hardback “black” series of Academic Press…. what can I say…) Anyway, in that book it was also a great surprise to see that she used an epigraph in her “Spectral Approximation of Linear Operators” by the the Greek poet Y. Ritsos (who had received the Lenin Prize) saying something about her sensibilities.

May she rest in peace
Stratis