Raphaël Salem (Greek: Ραφαέλ Σαλέμ; 7 November 1898 – 20 June 1963) was a Greek mathematician after whom the Salem numbers and Salem–Spencer sets are named, and whose widow founded the Salem Prize.
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Biography
Raphaël Salem was born in Saloniki, Ottoman Empire (now Thessaloniki, Greece) to Emmanuel and Fortunée Salem. His father was a well-known lawyer who dealt with international problems. Raphaël was brought up in a Jewish family who followed the traditions of their ancestors. At age 15, the family moved to France and Salem attended the Lycée Condorcet for two years. Believing that he would follow in his father's footsteps, Salem entered the Law Faculty of the University of Paris. His interests, though, were not in law but rather in mathematics and engineering. Soon thereafter, Salem started taking mathematics courses with Hadamard all the while continuing his studies for law. In 1919, he received his law degree. He then began working for a doctorate in law, but quickly decided to change direction to science, which he had been studying for years in parallel to his work in law.
After receiving his licence ès sciences from the Sorbonne, Salem then worked for a degree in engineering. In 1921, he received the degree of Ingénieur des Arts et Manufactures from the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures. Having completed his studies in law, science and engineering, Salem then went into banking and started working for Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas in 1921. In his free time, he worked on Fourier series, a topic which interested him throughout his life.