Serre

Serre is a surname of French origin. It is also associated with Jean-Pierre Serre, a French mathematician whose work has had a lasting impact on algebraic geometry and number theory. Serre's contributions include Serre duality, a fundamental relation between cohomology groups on smooth projective varieties; Serre's criterion for affineness, which characterizes when a scheme is affine via vanishing of higher cohomology; and important developments in étale cohomology and Galois cohomology. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1954 for his work in these areas. The name Serre is also attached to conjectures and concepts in algebraic geometry, such as Serre's conjecture on projective modules, proven later by Quillen and Suslin that over a polynomial ring, projective modules are free. Beyond the mathematician, Serre is a French surname borne by other individuals and, in some cases, used in place names in France.