ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

From Quantum Logic to Fuzzy Theory: Paulette Destouches-Février (1914-2013)

• In Event: Recovering the Histories of Women in Quantum Physics 2

English Abstract

Paulette Destouches-Février, a French physicist, mathematician, and philosopher, was a pioneer in quantum physics, quantum logic, and computer science. Her academic trajectory was shaped by her involvement in Louis de Broglie’s research group at the Henri Poincaré Institute in Paris. She earned a physics degree in 1939 with her thesis Sur l'indiscernabilité des corpuscules, published in Journal de Physique et Le Radium that same year. Between 1936 and 1945, she conducted independent research on quantum logic, parallel to the contemporaneous work of von Neumann and Birkhoff.

After teaching physics, she obtained her doctorate in 1945 for La structure des théories physiques, later published in 1951. Her structuralist approach to the philosophy of physics gained international attention after she and her husband participated in the 1958 International Symposium on the “Axiomatic Method and Model Theory” at UC Berkeley, where she presented The Logical Structure of Physical Theories.

In the postwar decades, Destouches-Février played a key role in the emergence of computer science in France. As a CNRS engineer at the Blaise Pascal Institute, she completed a second doctorate in statistical mathematics (1967) and conducted pioneering work on fuzzy theory and the representation of fuzzy measures by probabilities. She also translated Andrzej Grzegorczyk’s Some Classes of Recursive Functions and published Déterminisme et indéterminisme (1955), awarded the Prix Saintour of the Académie des Sciences morales et politiques.

Destouches-Février’s career, which moved from quantum physics to quantum and fuzzy logic, illuminates the deep conceptual links between physics and computing. Though based on distinct mathematical foundations, both logics sought to formalize uncertainty—a goal that defined her lifelong intellectual project.

Author

• Andrea Reichenberger, Technical University of Munich