Michelle Schatzman (8 December 1949 â 20 August 2010) was a French mathematician, specializing in applied mathematics, who combined research as a CNRS research director and teaching as a professor at the Claude Bernard University Lyon 1.
Michelle Véra Schatzman was born in a secular Jewish family. Her father was French astrophysicist Evry Schatzman, who also was president of the Rationalist Union. Her mother Ruth Schatzman (née Fisher) was an associate of Russian in high schools in Lille and Paris, then a lecturer at the Paris VIII University.
Michelle Schatzman married Yves Pigier in 1975. They had two children, Claude Mangoubi (née Pigier), born in 1976 in Clamart, and René Pigier, born in 1983 in Paris. They divorced in 1988. Her daughter is married to Dan Mangoubi, an Israeli mathematician, a professor at the Albert Einstein Institute of the University of Jerusalem.
Michelle Schatzman entered the ÃÂcole normale supérieure de jeunes filles in 1968. She obtained the aggregation and a PhD in 1971, under the leadership of Haïm Brezis and a state doctorate in 1979 under the direction of Jacques Louis Lions.
She was an attaché, then a research assistant from 1972 to 1984 at the Laboratoire d'analyse numérique in Paris 6, now Laboratoire Jacques-Louis Lions, then from spring 1981, at the Center of Applied Mathematics of the ÃÂcole Polytechnique.
She became a professor at the Claude Bernard University Lyon 1 in 1984, in the Lyon-Saint-ÃÂtienne digital analysis team, which in 1995 became the Laboratory for Applied Mathematics in Lyon (MAPLY), for eight years. This laboratory merged in 2005 with other laboratories in Lyons to found the .
She returned to the CNRS in 2005 as a research director while continuing to teach, especially master students.
Schatzma wrote more than 70 scientific articles, many of them are still frequently quoted.
In 2026, Schatzman was announced as one of 72 historical women in STEM whose names have been proposed to be added to the 72 men already celebrated on the Eiffel Tower. The plan was announced by the Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo following the recommendations of a committee led by Isabelle Vauglin of Femmes et Sciences and Jean-François Martins, representing the operating company which runs the Eiffel Tower.