Ollivier

Ollivier is a French surname derived from Olivier, the French form of Oliver, which itself derives from the Latin Oliverius. The name is common in France and in French-speaking communities. It may refer to several people and to a mathematical concept named after one of its bearers.

Notable people:

- Émile Ollivier (1825–1913), French statesman who served as Prime Minister under the Second Empire.

- Yann Ollivier, French mathematician known for introducing Ollivier's Ricci curvature.

In mathematics, Ollivier's Ricci curvature is a notion that extends the idea of Ricci curvature to general metric spaces and graphs. It is defined using the 1-Wasserstein distance between probability measures assigned to neighboring points, capturing how the measures diverge when transported, and it is used to study geometric and probabilistic properties of spaces and Markov chains.

See also: Olivier.