Gerard Debreu's Birth Card: The Jack of Diamonds

In the record

Gérard Debreu (French: [dəbʁø]; 4 July 1921 – 31 December 2004) was a French-born economist and mathematician. The birth-card coordinate for July 4 is the Jack of Diamonds — a calendar position, not a forecast of the 1983 Economic Sciences prize.

Nobel Prize record

• 1983 The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel — for having incorporated new analytical methods into economic theory and for his rigorous reformulation of the theory of general equilibrium

The Jack of Diamonds coordinate

Gerard Debreu's birthday maps to the Jack of Diamonds (The Successful Messenger). Card Blueprints treats that as a 365-day coordinate: solar value = 55 − (2 × month + day), and the year is unused. It is not a prediction about a Nobel Prize and not a verdict on Gerard Debreu. The card's own language, quoted as system copy rather than biography: You try a new approach to value and you finish enough of it to know if it works.

Live Jack of Diamonds meaning page

Gerard Debreu in the public record

Best known as a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he began work in 1962, he won the 1983 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. His father was the business partner of his maternal grandfather in lace manufacturing, a traditional industry in Calais. Debreu was orphaned at an early age, as his father committed suicide and his mother died of natural causes. Prior to the start of World War II, he received his baccalauréat and went to Ambert to begin preparing for the entrance examination of a grande école. Later on, he moved from Ambert to Grenoble to complete his preparation, both places being in Vichy France during World War II. In 1941, he was admitted to the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, along with Marcel Boiteux. He was influenced by Henri Cartan and the Bourbaki writers. When he was about to take the final examinations in 1944, the Normandy landings occurred and he, instead, enlisted in the French army.

Summarised from the lead section of the Wikipedia article Gérard Debreu (CC BY-SA 4.0). No biographical facts were written for this page beyond that article.

Where the record meets the Jack of Diamonds

A card is a calendar coordinate, not a cause. What follows sets one line of the card's own published language beside one sentence of the sourced record, paired by a documented rule. It is a resemblance offered for the reader to weigh — not a claim about Gerard Debreu, and not a forecast of a Nobel Prize.

You try a new approach to value and you finish enough of it to know if it works.

In 1959, he published his classical monograph, Theory of Value: An Axiomatic Analysis of Economic Equilibrium (Cowles Foundation Monographs Series), which is one of the most important works in mathematical economics.

Paired on shared wording: value, works.

Also on the record

1. He was transferred for training to Algeria and then served in the occupying French Forces in Germany until July 1945.
2. Debreu passed the Agrégation de Mathématiques exams at the end of 1945 and the beginning of 1946.
3. By this time, he had become interested in economics, particularly in the general equilibrium theory of Léon Walras.
4. From 1946 to 1948, he was an assistant in the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.

Other laureates with this card

• André Lwoff — 1965 Physiology or Medicine
• Bernardo Houssay — 1947 Physiology or Medicine
• C.T.R. Wilson — 1927 Physics
• Edwin G. Krebs — 1992 Physiology or Medicine
• Eugene F. Fama — 2013 Economic Sciences
• Ferdinand Braun — 1909 Physics
• Friedrich von Hayek — 1974 Economic Sciences
• H. Robert Horvitz — 2002 Physiology or Medicine
• Heinrich Rohrer — 1986 Physics
• Henry Dunant — 1901 Peace
• Herbert A. Hauptman — 1985 Chemistry
• Jules A. Hoffmann — 2011 Physiology or Medicine
• 8 more laureates share this card.

FAQ

What is Gerard Debreu's birth card?

The Jack of Diamonds. July 4 maps to that card through the public Card Blueprints formula. The year of birth is not used.

Does a birth card predict a Nobel Prize?

No. These pages are coordinates, not fortune-telling. A birth card names a calendar day in a 52-card year. It does not forecast prizes, character, or fate.

Where do Gerard Debreu's dates come from?

Birth date 1921-07-04 is the Nobel Prize API v2.1 day-precision date, verified against Wikidata P569 (CC0, day precision, Gregorian preferred). The two sources match. Year-only Nobel dates and Nobel↔Wikidata conflicts are dropped, not guessed. Page hooks and evidence come from the Wikipedia REST summary (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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