Peter Teichner (born June 30, 1963 in

Bratislava Bratislava (, also ; ; german: Preßburg/Pressburg ; hu, Pozsony) is the capital and largest city of Slovakia. Officially, the population of the city is about 475,000; however, it is estimated to be more than 660,000 — approximately 140% o ...

, Czechoslovakia) is a German mathematician and one of the directors of the

Max Planck Institute for Mathematics The Max Planck Institute for Mathematics (german: Max-Planck-Institut für Mathematik, MPIM) is a prestigious research institute located in Bonn, Germany. It is named in honor of the German physicist Max Planck and forms part of the Max Plan ...

Bonn The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ru ...

. His main areas of work are

topology In mathematics, topology (from the Greek words , and ) is concerned with the properties of a geometric object that are preserved under continuous deformations, such as stretching, twisting, crumpling, and bending; that is, without closing ho ...

and

geometry Geometry (; ) is, with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. It is concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is c ...

Life

In 1988, Peter Teichner graduated from the

University of Mainz The Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (german: Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz) is a public research university in Mainz, Rhineland Palatinate, Germany, named after the printer Johannes Gutenberg since 1946. With approximately 32,000 stu ...

with a degree in mathematics. After graduating, he worked for one year in Canada, funded by the "Government of Canada Award", at

McMaster University McMaster University (McMaster or Mac) is a public research university in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The main McMaster campus is on of land near the residential neighbourhoods of Ainslie Wood and Westdale, adjacent to the Royal Botanical ...

in Hamilton (Ontario). From 1989 to 1990 he was affiliated with the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics. From 1990 to 1992 he worked at the University of Mainz as a research assistant, and in 1992 he received his doctorate with

Matthias Kreck Matthias Kreck (born 22 July 1947, in Dillenburg) is a German mathematician who works in the areas of Algebraic Topology and Differential topology. From 1994 to 2002 he was director of the Oberwolfach Research Institute for Mathematics and from ...

as his advisor. The title of his doctoral thesis was Topological four-manifolds with finite fundamental group. With a Feodor Lynen Scholarship from the

Humboldt Foundation The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (german: Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung) is a foundation established by the government of the Federal Republic of Germany and funded by the Federal Foreign Office, the Federal Ministry of Education and Rese ...

, he went to

UC San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego is th ...

from 1992 to 1995 and collaborated with Michael Freedman. In 1995 he worked at the

Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques The Institut des hautes études scientifiques (IHÉS; English: Institute of Advanced Scientific Studies) is a French research institute supporting advanced research in mathematics and theoretical physics. It is located in Bures-sur-Yvette, ju ...

in Bures-sur-Yvette, France. From 1995 to 1996 he was again at the University of Mainz. From 1996 to 1997 he was at UC Berkeley as a Miller Research Fellow. From 1996 he was an associate professor at UC San Diego, and in 1999 he was granted tenure. He stayed at UC San Diego until 2004, since then he has been a full professor at UC Berkeley, where he retired in 2019. He has been a director at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn since 2008. He has also been the managing director from 2011 until 2019. His students include Arthur Bartels, James Conant, and Christopher Schommer-Pries.

Academic work

Peter Teichner's work lies in the field of topology, which deals with qualitative properties of geometric objects. His early achievements were on the classification of 4-manifolds. Together with the Fields medalist

Mike Freedman Michael Freedman has won nine Emmy Awards. His career at ABC ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet. ABC or abc may also refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting * American Broadcasting Comp ...

, Peter Teichner made contributions to the classification of 4-manifolds whose fundamental group only grows sub-exponentially. Later in his career, he moved on to study Euclidean and topological field theories. In particular, in an ongoing project, Peter Teichner and

Stephan Stolz Stephan may refer to: * Stephan, South Dakota, United States * Stephan (given name), a masculine given name * Stephan (surname), a Breton-language surname See also * Sankt-Stephan * Stefan (disambiguation) * Stephan-Oterma * Stephani * Stephe ...

try to refine the mathematical term quantum field theory in such a way that deformation classes of quantum field theories can be interpreted as a qualitative property of a manifold. More specifically, these should form a cohomology theory. The emerging language should be flexible enough to formulate new physical theories, but also so precise that predictions can be made about the impossibility of certain combinations of space-time and quantum fields.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Teichner, Peter 1963 births Living people Topologists 21st-century German mathematicians Max Planck Institute directors Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz alumni