René Frédéric Thom (French: [ʁəne tõ]; September 2, 1923 – October 25, 2002) was a French mathematician. He made his reputation as a topologist, moving on to aspects of what would be called singularity theory; he became world-famous among the wider academic community and the educated general public for one aspect of this latter interest, his work as founder of catastrophe theory (later developed by Erik Christopher Zeeman). He received the Fields Medal in 1958.
René Thom was born in Montbéliard, Doubs. He was educated at the Lycée Saint-Louis and the École Normale Supérieure, both in Paris. He received his PhD in 1951 from the University of Paris. His thesis, titled Espaces fibrés en sphères et carrés de Steenrod (Sphere bundles and Steenrod squares), was written under the direction of Henri Cartan. The foundations of cobordism theory, for which he received the Fields Medal at Edinburgh in 1958, were already present in his thesis.
After a fellowship in the United States, he went on to teach at the Universities of Grenoble (1953–1954) and Strasbourg (1954–1963), where he was appointed Professor in 1957. In 1964, he moved to the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques, in Bures-sur-Yvette. He was awarded the Brouwer Medal in 1970, the Grand Prix Scientifique de la Ville de Paris in 1974, and became a Member of the Academie des Sciences of Paris in 1976.
If ever you got rain in your heart
someone has hurt you, and torn you apart
am I unwise to open up your eyes to love me?
And let it be like they said it would be
me loving you girl, and you loving me
am I unwise to open up your eyes to love me?
(chorus)
Run to me whenever you're lonely (to love me)
Run to me if you need a shoulder
Now and then, you need someone older
so darling, you run to me
And when you're out in the cold
no one beside you, and no one to hold
am I unwise to open up your eyes to love me?
And when you've got nothing to lose
nothing to pay for, nothing to choose
am I unwise to open up your eyes to love me?
(chorus)