René Thom

René Frédéric Thom (; 2 September 1923 – 25 October 2002) was a French mathematician, who received the Fields Medal in 1958.

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 the founder of catastrophe theory (later developed by Christopher Zeeman). Provided by Wikipedia