Gerd Faltings (; born 28 July 1954) 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 ...

known for his work in

arithmetic geometry In mathematics, arithmetic geometry is roughly the application of techniques from algebraic geometry to problems in number theory. Arithmetic geometry is centered around Diophantine geometry, the study of rational points of algebraic varieties. ...

Education

From 1972 to 1978, Faltings studied

mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...

and

physics Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...

at the

University of Münster The University of Münster (, until 2023 , WWU) is a public research university located in the city of Münster, North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. With more than 43,000 students and over 120 fields of study in 15 departments, it is Germany's ...

. Interrupted by 15 months of obligatory military service, he received his

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

in mathematics in 1978.

Career and research

In 1981 he obtained the ''venia legendi'' (

Habilitation Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in Germany, France, Italy, Poland and some other European and non-English-speaking countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excelle ...

) in mathematics, from the

. During this time he was an assistant professor at the University of Münster. From 1982 to 1984, he was

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

at the University of Wuppertal. From 1985 to 1994, he was professor at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

. In the fall of 1988 and in the academic year 1992–1993 he was a visiting scholar at the

Institute for Advanced Study The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry located in Princeton, New Jersey. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholars, including Albert Ein ...

. In 1986 he was awarded the

Fields Medal The Fields Medal is a prize awarded to two, three, or four mathematicians under 40 years of age at the International Congress of Mathematicians, International Congress of the International Mathematical Union (IMU), a meeting that takes place e ...

at the ICM at Berkeley for proving the

Tate conjecture In number theory and algebraic geometry, the Tate conjecture is a 1963 conjecture of John Tate that would describe the algebraic cycles on a variety in terms of a more computable invariant, the Galois representation on étale cohomology. The ...

for abelian varieties over number fields, the Shafarevich conjecture for abelian varieties over number fields and the Mordell conjecture, which states that any non-singular projective curve of genus ''g'' > 1 defined over a number field ''K'' contains only finitely many ''K''-rational points. As a Fields Medalist he gave an ICM plenary talk ''Recent progress in arithmetic algebraic geometry''. In 1994 as an ICM invited speaker in Zurich he gave a talk ''Mumford-Stabilität in der algebraischen Geometrie.'' Extending methods of Paul Vojta, he proved the Mordell–Lang conjecture, which is a generalization of the Mordell conjecture. Together with Gisbert Wüstholz, he reproved Roth's theorem, for which Roth had been awarded the Fields medal in 1958. In 1994, he returned to Germany and from 1994 to 2018, he was a director of the

Max Planck Institute for Mathematics The Max Planck Institute for Mathematics (, MPIM) is a research institute located in Bonn, Germany. It is named in honor of the German physicist Max Planck and forms part of the Max Planck Society (''Max-Planck-Gesellschaft''), an association o ...

Bonn Bonn () is a federal city in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, located on the banks of the Rhine. With a population exceeding 300,000, it lies about south-southeast of Cologne, in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr region. This ...

. In 1996, he received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of 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 ...

, which is the highest honour awarded in German research. Faltings has been the formal supervisor of over a dozen students, including Shinichi Mochizuki, Wieslawa Niziol, and Nikolai Dourov.

Awards and honours

(1986) *

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...

(1988/89) * Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize (1996) * von Staudt Prize (2008) * Heinz Gumin Prize (2010) *

King Faisal International Prize The King Faisal Prize (, formerly King Faisal International Prize), is an annual award sponsored by King Faisal Foundation presented to "dedicated men and women whose contributions make a positive difference". The foundation awards prizes in fiv ...

(2014) * Shaw Prize (2015) *

Foreign Member of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the Fellows of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...

(2016) * Cantor Medal (2017) *

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

International Member (2018) * Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts (2024)

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Faltings, Gerd 1954 births Living people People from Gelsenkirchen Studienstiftung alumni University of Münster alumni Princeton University faculty Institute for Advanced Study visiting scholars 20th-century German mathematicians 21st-century German mathematicians Fields Medalists Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize winners Arithmetic geometers Academic staff of the University of Bonn Foreign members of the Royal Society Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences Max Planck Institute directors