человек, что-то знаВШИЙ в сущности катастроф считаЛ...
From the newspaper "Le Monde", October 31th, 2002 we get this:
Rene Thom died on October 25th. He was 79 years old.
He had become famous for his pioneering work in
Catastrophe Theory and was awarded the Fields Medal
in 1958.