Prof gerd faltings biography

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In 1983 Faltings proved that for every n>2 there are at most a finite number of coprime integers x,y,z with xn+yn=zn. In 1985 Faltings was appointed to the faculty at Princeton. From 1982 to 1984, he was professor at the University of Wuppertal. There I managed to prove the Mordell conjecture over numberfields, and this success changed my personal circumstances considerably.

As a result, I concluded firstly that physics is not a branch of mathematics, and secondly, was inspired to study moduli spaces of vector bundles on curves where I could show some new results. Szpiro had extended their theory to positive characteristics and tried to use Arakelov theory (another invention by Arakelov) to extend this to number fields. This is the largest German research prize and it consists of a research grant of 2.5 million euro, to be used within seven years.

On the first topic I wrote a book jointly with C L Chai, and on the second I extended ideas of J Tate to define “almost étale coverings”. From 1982–84 I was a full professor at the University of Wuppertal.

At Princeton I also was awarded a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation (1988).

In 1994 I accepted an offer from the Max Planck Society to become one of the directors of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn, and I am stll there. In 1978 he received his Doctor of Philosophy in mathematics and in 1981 he obtained the venia legendi (Habilitation) in mathematics, both from the University of Münster.

Career

During this time he was an assistant professor at the University of Münster.

He received the medal primarily for his proof of the Mordell Conjecture which he achieved using methods of arithmetic algebraic geometry. Also for spin groups of dimension divisible by four there should exist explicit theta-divisors associated to the two spin representations. In the following year he became the Director of the Institute, a position he continues to hold.

Karl Georg Christian von Staudt Prize 2008. Let us quote Faltings' own description of his research interests:-

My main interests are arithmetic geometry (diophantine equations, Shimura-varieties), p-adic cohomology (relation crystalline to étale, p-adic Hodge theory), and vector bundles on curves (Verlinde-formula, loop-groups, theta-divisors).

Contribution to research area "Moduli spaces":-

I constructed arithmetic toroidal compactifications of the moduli space of abelian varieties.

In the same year he received the Danny Heinemen Prize from the Akademie der Wissenschaften, Göttingen. I hope to construct explicit sections of these bundles.