Jacques Herbrand
Jacques Herbrand (1908-1931) was a French mathematician, who worked in mathematical logic, and class field theory.
He introduced recursive functions in about 1932. Herbrand's Theorem was an early result in proof theory. The Herbrand quotient is a type of Euler characteristic, used in homological algebra.
Herbrand finished his doctorate at École Normale Supérieure in Paris under Ernest Vessiot in 1929. Herbrand joined the army in October, 1929. He was awarded a Rockefeller fellowship that enabled him to study in Germany in 1931, first with John von Neumann in Berlin, then during June with Emil Artin in Hamburg, and finally with Emmy Noether in Göttingen.
In July 1931 he was mountain-climbing in the French Alps with two friends when he fell to his death in the granite mountains of La Bérarde, near Isère.
