Max Planck Institute for Mathematics

The London Mathematical Society has elected Prof. Don Zagier (MPIM, Bonn) and Prof. Edward Witten (IAS, Princeton) to Honorary Membership of the Society in 2019.

Professor Peter Scholze received the Bundesverdienstkreuz (Great Cross of Merit) from the Federal President of Germany, Frank-Walter Steinmeier. The ceremony took place at Schloss Bellevue in Berlin (Federal President’s principal official residence). The Federal President's office declared that due to his exceptional achievements Peter Scholze was a motivating role model for future generations of his research area.

We are pleased to announce that the city of Bonn decided on September 19, 2019 to name a new street in Bonn after our institute founder, Professor Friedrich Hirzebruch. The street will be called Friedrich-Hirzebruch-Allee and is located in the Poppelsdorf campus between the corner of the Carl-Troll-Strasse/Karlrobert-Kreiten-Strasse and the new center of lecture halls, Endenicher Allee 19c.

The Max Planck Institute for Mathematics mourns the death of Michael Atiyah, one of the giants of mathematics. Over many decades Michael Atiyah was a frequent and welcome visitor, inspiring speaker, ingeneous collaborator, and friend to many of the mathematicians in Bonn. Together with Friedrich Hirzebruch, MPIM's founding director and one of Michael's oldest and closest friends, he laid the foundations for topological K-theory, an important tool in algebraic topology. He almost always gave the opening lecture of the annual Mathematische Arbeitstagung in Bonn, from its beginning in 1957.