Tignol was awarded a PhD (1988) at the Université catholique de Louvain for his thesis Involution bodies of finite rank at their center and with characteristic other than 21 written under the supervision of Jacques Tits.[3] He subsequently became a professor at the same university.[2] He is the author of numerous papers on algebra and is responsible for extending concepts and results from quadratic form theory to the study of involution algebras.[1] In 1996, he was invited by the European Congress of Mathematics in Budapest to speak on "Algebras with involution and classical groups".[4]
In his 2001 book, Galois' Theory of Algebraic Equations, he explored the evolution of algebra from ancient Babylon to the eras of Galois and Grothendieck. A review by the Mathematical Association of America said, "Anybody with an interest in algebra or the history of mathematics should look at this book. And of course it goes without saying that it belongs in any good university library."[5]
1993 "On the signature of an involution", (with David W. Lewis), Arch. Math. (Basel) 60, no. 2, 128–135.
1979 "Division algebras of degree 4 and 8 with involution", (with Shimshon Amitsur and L. H. Rowen), Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, vol. 115, p. 691-693
1995 "The multipliers of similitudes and the Brauer group of homogeneous varieties", (with Alexander Merkurjev), Journal fur die Reine und Angewandte Mathematik, vol. 461, p. 13-48
1993 "Hyperbolic involutions", (with Eva Bayer-Fluckiger and D. B. Shapiro), Mathematische Zeitschrift, vol. 214, p. 461-476
