Jean Cavaillès

Brunschvicg taught him; Delsarte and Aron were fellow-students. Cavaillès’ ideas had a deep influence on his friend Bachelard. He worked closely with Noether, published Sartre’s first essay, and knew the historian and Resistance chief Bloch personally. Cavaillès’ and his great friend Canguilhem’s professional paths were deeply intertwined. He encouraged Canguilhem into the Resistance; Canguilhem ensured after he was killed by the Gestapo that his work got published, writing a biography and calling him “a philosopher mathematician loaded with explosives, lucid and reckless… if that’s not a hero, what is?”