Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn Mourns Death of Günter Harder

Emeritus director of institute passed away at age 87

Bonn, June 11, 2025. The Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn mourns the death of Professor Günter Harder, who passed away on Tuesday, June 10, at the age of 87. Günter Harder was a scientific member of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics since 1991 and director from 1995 to 2006. His work area was arithmetic geometry and number theory, and after his retirement he remained a very active emeritus director. Our institute has lost a wonderful person and a great mathematician who will be deeply missed!

Günter Harder was born on March 14, 1938 in Ratzeburg, Germany. He studied mathematics in Hamburg and Göttingen and received his doctoral degree in 1964. After a one-year postdoc position at Princeton University and a position as assistant professor at the University of Heidelberg, he became professor at the University of Bonn. From 1974 to 1980 he was professor in Wuppertal and then returned  Bonn. From 1995 to 2006 he was one of the directors of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics.

His early work was dedicated to the study of Galois cohomology of linear algebraic groups and the reduction theory of arithmetic groups. Later he developed the Langlands theory for function fields and connected it with the geometry of moduli spaces of vector bundles. The main subject of his studies was the cohomology of arithmetic groups. In particular, he initiated the study of Eisenstein cohomology and its relation to special values of L-functions.

Günter Harder was awarded the Leibniz Prize in 1987 and the Karl Georg Christian von Staudt Prize in 2004.