Aktuelles

MPIM Director Dennis Gaitsgory receives the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics, endowed with 3 million US dollars “for foundational works and numerous breakthrough contributions to the geometric Langlands program and its quantum version; in particular, the development of the derived algebraic geometry approach and the proof of the geometric Langlands conjecture in characteristic 0”.

SCAM E-MAILS GOING AROUND FROM VARIOUS E-MAIL ADDRESSES

It has come to our attention that some people have been contacted by various e-mail addresses about their stay during MPIM conferences (even if they are not planning to attend any conferences). Please be aware that this is a scam!

Artificial intelligence and computer science are driving developments in many areas of society – including in scientific research. This has prompted the Max Planck Society and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to honour outstanding achievements in the use of algorithms in mathematics, microscopy and climate research in 2024: The Max Planck-Humboldt Research Award, endowed with 1.5 million euros, goes to Geordie Williamson, who was Advanced Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics from 2011-2016, and is now Professor at the University of Sydney. Williamson uses artificial intelligence (AI) for his fundamental work in mathematics.

Proposed by Robert Langlands in the 1960s, the eponymous program is one of the largest projects in modern mathematic and it consists of different branches. Over the years, the MPIM has gained a reputation as one of the hubs for the Langlands program. We are proud that MPIM Director Dennis Gaitsgory led a nine-person team of mathematicians that settles the geometric Langlands conjecture. The proof is the culmination of a research program that spanned three decades. You can read the full story in a recent article in Quantamagazine.

Peter Scholze, director at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics and professor at the University of Bonn, was awarded the Pius XI Gold Medal 2020 by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. The medal is awarded every two years to a young scientist under the age of 45, chosen for his or her exceptional promise. After Luis A. Caffarelli (1988), Laure Saint-Raymond (2004), and Cédric Villani (2014), Peter Scholze is only the fourth mathematician to receive this honor.

Tobias Barthel, advanced researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics, has received a prestigeous ERC starting grant for his project on the "spectral geometry of higher categories". The total budget of the grant is 1.5 million euros for the project duration of 5 years. The eleven Max Planck grantees are among the 397 young researchers who received an ERC Starting Grant in 2021.

The European Research Council (ERC) is the premier European funding organisation for excellent frontier research. It funds creative researchers of any nationality and age, to run projects based across Europe. The ERC offers four core grant schemes: Starting Grants, Consolidator Grants, Advanced Grants and Synergy Grants. The ERC is led by an independent governing body, the Scientific Council. Its prestigeous grants are awarded anually.

Dennis Gaitsgory is a newly appointed director at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn. He will join the three active directors Gerd Faltings, Peter Teichner, and Peter Scholze in July 2021.

Dennis Gaitsgory was Born in 1973 in Moldava, a republic of the Soviet Union at the time. He studied at Tel Aviv University under Joseph Bernstein from 1990–1996, where he received his doctorate in 1997 for a thesis on "Automorphic Sheaves and Eisenstein Series". In the academic years 1996/97 and 1998/99 he was at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. In 2001 he became Associate Professor at the University of Chicago before joining the faculty of Harvard University in 2005.

Gaëtan Borot studied at the ENS Paris and finished his PhD with Bertrand Eynard in theoretical physics at CEA Saclay in 2011. After two years as postdoc in Geneva and a visit of MIT, he joined the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in 2014 as Advanced Researcher (W2). In the Fall of 2020 he has moved to a chair at the Humboldt University in Berlin. He is working on the combinatorial and algebraic structures of quantum field theory and is best known for his contributions to topological recursion for which he has received the Dubrovin Medal of 2020. Christian Blohmann had a conversation with him about his new position and his time in Bonn.

Blohmann: How is your new job?

Gaëtan Borot, Advanced Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics, is one of the first two recipients of the newly created Dubrovin Medal. The prize committee has recognized "his numerous and wide-ranging contributions to the theory of topological recursion leading to the proof of the Bouchard-Marino conjecture and to several applications to geometry and mathematical physics in the area of integrable systems."