News

Carlo Pagano of Concordia University, currently a visitor at Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn, has received the 2025 André Aisenstadt Prize. This celebrates the achievements of young Canadians in both pure and applied mathematics. 

Doug Ulmer, currently a visitor at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn, was selected as member of the new class of 2025 fellows of the American Mathematical Society. The new group of fellows includes also the former MPIM guests Wiesława Nizioł and Florian Herzig. The prestigious Fellows of the AMS program recognizes members who have made outstanding contributions to the creation, exposition, advancement, communication, and utilization of mathematics.

Gerd Faltings, Emeritus Direktor des Max-Planck-Instituts für Mathematik in Bonn, wurde zum Mitglied des Orden pour le mérite gewählt, wie am 11.9.2024 durch das Bundespresseamt bekannt gegeben wurde. Dem Orden gehören somit 34 deutsche und 37 ausländische Mitglieder, darunter 17 Nobelpreisträgerinnen und -träger, an. Zu Mitgliedern des Ordens zählten mit Friedrich Hirzebruch und Yuri Manin bereits zwei weitere Direktoren des Max-Planck-Instituts für Mathematik.

Die Zuwahl in den Orden Pour le mérite zählt zu den höchsten Ehrungen, die Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftlern, Künstlerinnen und Künstlern in Deutschland zuteilwerden kann. Die Künstler- und Gelehrtenvereinigung wurde 1842 von Preußenkönig Friedrich Wilhelm IV. gegründet und 1952 von Bundespräsident Theodor Heuss wiederbelebt. Erster Kanzler des Ordens war der Naturforscher Alexander von Humboldt.

Der Orden Pour le mérite steht unter dem Protektorat des Bundespräsidenten. Finanziert und organisatorisch betreut wird er von der Staatsministerin für Kultur und Medien.

The Max Planck Institute for Mathematics mourns the death of its postdoctoral fellow

Tobias Kreutz ( * 04.08.1996 - † 08.08.2024).

He completed his PhD in 2022 at the Humboldt University Berlin under the guidance of Bruno Klingler and Laurent Fargues. Since then he has been a visitor at the institute. Tobias has been working at the interface of complex and $p$-adic Hodge theory, with particular focus on the transcendental periods arising in both settings. In his last paper, he has proposed obstructions to complex Hodge structures being of geometric origin. He was a cherished member of our community and will be greatly missed by his friends and colleagues.

Maryna Viazovska, full professor and Chair of Number Theory at the Institute of Mathematics of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, has joined the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics as external scientific member. She was PhD student of Don Zagier from 2008-2012 and obtained her doctoral degree from the University of Bonn. Since then, she has returned to the institute regularly as a visitor and speaker. We are happy that Maryna will now play an even more active role in the research community and the development of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics.

Ana Caraiani, who holds the Hausdorff Chair at the University of Bonn, is newly appointed Max Planck Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics. The Max Planck Fellowship is a prestigeous honor bestowed on outstanding university professors by the Max Planck Society for a limited term of 5 years. The fellows receive funds to build up a small research group at the host institute. The goal is to promote cooperation between university faculty and Max Planck Society researchers.

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.

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.