Élie Cartan

Élie Joseph Cartan (; 9 April 1869 – 6 May 1951) was an influential French mathematician who did fundamental work in the theory of Lie groups, differential systems (coordinate-free geometric formulation of PDEs), and differential geometry. He also made significant contributions to general relativity and indirectly to quantum mechanics. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest mathematicians of the twentieth century.

His son Henri Cartan was an influential mathematician working in algebraic topology. Provided by Wikipedia