doctoral_advisor death_place death_date work_institution birth_place image_size nationality doctoral_students field birth_date residence article_title alma_mater
charles Émile picard wassenaar , the netherlands 24 july 1980 harvard paris , france 150px france , u.s. kumpati s. narendra , rui de figueiredo electrical engineering , mathematics , physics , economics 11 january 1891 france , u.s. , netherlands philippe le corbeiller
 École polytechnique , university of paris
philippe le corbeiller

philippe emmanuel le corbeiller -lrb- january 11 , 1891 -- july 24 , 1980 -rrb- was a french-american electrical engineer , mathematician , physicist , and educator .
he was trained as an engineer at the École polytechnique -lrb- entering class of 1910 -rrb- , served in the french signal corps during world war i , worked on telegraph and radio systems , and in 1926 received a doctorate in mathematics from the sorbonne , having written a thesis on indefinite quadratic forms under the supervision of charles Émile picard .
he was a close friend of dutch physicist balthasar van der pol , whose work on nonlinear self-oscillating dynamical systems -lrb- see van der pol oscillator -rrb- he extended and popularized among electrical engineers , mathematicians , and economists .
in 1941 he fled the german occupation of france during world war ii and became a lecturer in electronics at harvard university .
he eventually became a us citizen and a professor of applied physics and general education at harvard .
he returned to europe in 1968 and lived the rest of his life in the netherlands .
his intellectual interests were quite varied , spanning several branches of pure and applied mathematics , as well as electronics , acoustics , control theory , economics , and the history and philosophy of science .
at harvard he had a major influence on the work of economic theorist richard m. goodwin .
he was a fellow of the american academy of arts and sciences and the acoustical society of america , as well as a member of the american physical society and the econometric society .
