Press releases

Emeritus director of institute passed away at age 85

Bonn, January 8, 2023. The Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn mourns the death of Professor Yuri Ivanovich Manin. The eminent mathematician passed away on Saturday, January 7, at the age of 85. Yuri Manin was a scientific member and director of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics from 1992 to 2005, after which he remained an extremely active emeritus director. His work largely influenced the development of modern mathematics. With Yuri Manin, mathematics has lost one of his truly great personalities. He was a wonderful human being and a renowned researcher whose contributions have shaped the entire field. Our institute will always remain his institute, too.

The Fields Medal is considered the Nobel Prize of mathematics. This year the International Mathematical Union chose to award it to Maryna Viazovska, who wrote her doctoral thesis at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics with Don Zagier and received her PhD from the University of Bonn in 2013. The Ukranian mathematician is second woman to ever receive this prize.

A number of mathematicians who have held positions, were long-term visitors, or PhD students at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics are invited to present their work at the next International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM), which will take place on August 1-9, 2018 in Rio de Janeiro. Most notably, the newly appointed MPIM director Peter Scholze and Geordie Williamson, who has been Advanced Researcher at MPIM from 2011-2016, are both invited plenary speakers. Further invited speakers with ties to MPIM include:

Pavel Mnev, an Advanced Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics from 2014-2016, has been awarded the 2016 André Lichnerowicz Prize in Poisson Geometry. The biennial award is given for outstanding work by young mathematicians in Poisson Geometry.

Pavel Mnev received his Ph.D. in 2008 from the Steklov Mathematical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg under the direction of the mathematical physicist Ludwig Faddeev. Mnev held a postdoctoral position at the University of Zurich, before coming to the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn in 2014. This fall, he has moved to a faculty position at the University of Notre Dame. His research interests are in mathematical physics, in particular in the interactions of quantum field theory with topology, homological/homotopical algebra, and supergeometry.

At a press conference on June 1, 2015 in Hong Kong, the Shaw Prize Foundation announced that this year's Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences is awarded in equal shares to Gerd Faltings and Henryk Iwaniec for their introduction and development of fundamental tools in number theory, allowing them as well as others to resolve some longstanding classical problems. The prize consists of a monetary award of one million US dollars.

Die Max-Planck-Gesellschaft hat Stefan Willems vom Bonner Max-Planck-Institut für Mathematik mit dem Azubipreis 2014 ausgezeichnet. Stefan Willems hat seine dreijährige Ausbildung zum Fachinformatiker Fachrichtung Systemintegration im Sommer 2013 abgeschlossen und ist derzeit weiter in der IT-Abteilung des MPIM beschäftigt.

Gerd Faltings, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn and Professor at the University of Bonn, was awarded the 2014 King Faisal International Prize for Science for his groundbreaking contributions to algebraic geometry and number theory. This was announced by the president of the King Faisal Foundation, Prince Khaled Al-Faisal, on 14 January 2014.

Founding director of institute passed away at age 84

Bonn, May 30, 2012. The Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn mourns the death of Professor Dr. Friedrich Hirzebruch. As it became known on Tuesday, the eminent mathematician and citizen of Bonn passed away on Sunday, May 27 at the age of 84. Professor Hirzebuch is the founding director of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics, which he headed from 1980 to 1995. His work largely influenced the development of modern mathematics. Through his personal efforts and achievements he contributed in an essential way to the reconstruction of mathematics research in Germany after World War II.

Director emeritus Prof. Yuri Manin received the János Bolyai International Award for Mathematics from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences on December 1, 2010. The prize was established in 1902 and is awarded every five years for the best mathematical monograph of the last 15 years. It consists of a cash award of US$ 25,000 and a medal.