Jürgen Jost (born 9 June 1956) is a German

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

specializing in geometry. He has been a director of the

Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences The Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences (MPI MiS) in Leipzig is a research institute of the Max Planck Society. Founded on March 1, 1996, the institute works on projects which apply mathematics in various areas of natural science ...

Leipzig Leipzig (, ; ; Upper Saxon: ; ) is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Saxony. The city has a population of 628,718 inhabitants as of 2023. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, eighth-largest city in Ge ...

since 1996.

Life and work

In 1975, he began studying mathematics, physics, economics and philosophy. In 1980 he received a

Dr. rer. nat. for, la, Doctor rerum naturalium, Doctor of Natural Sciences, paren=left, ), abbreviated Dr. rer. nat., is a doctoral academic degree awarded by universities in some European countries (e.g. Germany, Austria and Czech Republic) to graduates in phy ...

from the

University of Bonn The University of Bonn, officially the Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (), is a public research university in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the () on 18 October 1818 by Frederick Willi ...

under the supervision of . In 1984 he was at the University of Bonn for the habilitation. After his habilitation, he was at the

Ruhr University Bochum The Ruhr University Bochum (, ) is a public research university located in the southern hills of the central Ruhr area, Bochum, Germany. It was founded in 1962 as the first new public university in Germany after World War II. Instruction began ...

, the chair of Mathematics X, Analysis. During this time he was the coordinator of the project "Stochastic Analysis and systems with infinitely many degrees of freedom" July 1987 to December 1996. For this work he received the 1993 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize, awarded by the

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft The German Research Foundation ( ; DFG ) is a German research funding organization, which functions as a self-governing institution for the promotion of science and research in the Federal Republic of Germany. In 2019, the DFG had a funding bu ...

. Since 1996, he has been director and scientific member at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences in Leipzig. After more than 10 years of work in Bochum, this he followed: "tackle new research problems in the border area between mathematics and the natural sciences and simultaneously encourage mathematical research in Germany, particularly in the fields of geometry and analysis." In 1998 he was an honorary professor at the

University of Leipzig Leipzig University (), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 December 1409 by Frederick I, Electo ...

. In 2002, there, he initiated with two other scientists from the Max Planck Institute, the Interdisciplinary Center for Bioinformatics (IZBI). In 1986 he was

invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians An invitation system is a method of encouraging people to join an organization, such as a Club (organization), club or a website. In regular society, it refers to any system whereby new members are chosen; they cannot simply apply. In relation to w ...

in Berkeley (''Two dimensional geometric variational problems''). He is a fellow of the

American Mathematical Society The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...

.List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society
retrieved 23 November 2013. His research focuses are: * Complex dynamical systems *

Neural network A neural network is a group of interconnected units called neurons that send signals to one another. Neurons can be either biological cells or signal pathways. While individual neurons are simple, many of them together in a network can perfor ...

s *

Cognitive structure Cognition is the "mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, imag ...

s and theoretical neurobiology,

cognitive science Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary, scientific study of the mind and its processes. It examines the nature, the tasks, and the functions of cognition (in a broad sense). Mental faculties of concern to cognitive scientists include percep ...

, theoretical and

mathematical biology Mathematical and theoretical biology, or biomathematics, is a branch of biology which employs theoretical analysis, mathematical models and abstractions of living organisms to investigate the principles that govern the structure, development ...

Riemannian geometry Riemannian geometry is the branch of differential geometry that studies Riemannian manifolds, defined as manifold, smooth manifolds with a ''Riemannian metric'' (an inner product on the tangent space at each point that varies smooth function, smo ...

; analysis and geometry *

Calculus of variation The calculus of variations (or variational calculus) is a field of mathematical analysis that uses variations, which are small changes in functions and functionals, to find maxima and minima of functionals: mappings from a set of functions t ...

s and

partial differential equation In mathematics, a partial differential equation (PDE) is an equation which involves a multivariable function and one or more of its partial derivatives. The function is often thought of as an "unknown" that solves the equation, similar to ho ...

mathematical physics Mathematical physics is the development of mathematics, mathematical methods for application to problems in physics. The ''Journal of Mathematical Physics'' defines the field as "the application of mathematics to problems in physics and the de ...

Bibliography

* * * * * * * * * * * * *''Bosonic Strings: A mathematical treatment,'' AMS international press, 2001 * * * *

References

External links

Webpage at Max-Planck-Institut

{{DEFAULTSORT:Jost, Jurgen 20th-century German mathematicians Fellows of the American Mathematical Society German mathematical analysts Variational analysts Living people 1956 births University of Bonn alumni Academic staff of Ruhr University Bochum 21st-century German mathematicians Max Planck Institutes researchers Max Planck Institute directors