Gerd Faltings

Gerd Faltings (Template:IPA; born 28 July 1954) is a German mathematician known for his work in arithmetic geometry.<ref name=mactutor>Template:MacTutor Biography</ref><ref name=mathgene>Template:MathGenealogy</ref> He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1986 for his proofs of the Mordell Conjecture and several related conjectures.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Education

From 1972 to 1978, Faltings studied mathematics and physics at the University of Münster. Interrupted by 15 months of obligatory military service, he received his PhD in mathematics in 1978.<ref name=mathgene/><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Career and research

In 1981 he obtained the venia legendi (Habilitation) in mathematics, from the University of Münster. During this time he was an assistant professor at the University of Münster. From 1982 to 1984, he was professor at the University of Wuppertal.<ref name=Zeit>Template:Cite news</ref>

From 1985 to 1994, he was professor at Princeton University. In the fall of 1988 and in the academic year 1992–1993 he was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In 1986 he was awarded the Fields Medal at the ICM at Berkeley for proving the Tate conjecture for abelian varieties over number fields, the Shafarevich conjecture for abelian varieties over number fields and the Mordell conjecture,<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> 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,<ref name="BarsottiSymposium">Template:Cite book</ref> which is a generalization of the Mordell conjecture. Together with Gisbert Wüstholz,<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> 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 in Bonn. In 1996, he received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, which is the highest honour awarded in German research.

Faltings has been the formal supervisor of over a dozen students, including Shinichi Mochizuki,<ref name=shin/> Wieslawa Niziol,<ref name=niz/> and Nikolai Dourov.

Personal life

Faltings married Angelika in 1984; she died in 2011.<ref name="n776">Template:Cite web</ref>

Awards and honours

• Fields Medal (1986)
• Guggenheim Fellowship (1988/89) <ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize (1996)
• von Staudt Prize (2008) <ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• Heinz Gumin Prize (2010) <ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• King Faisal International Prize (2014)
• Shaw Prize (2015) <ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• Foreign Member of the Royal Society (2016) <ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• Cantor Medal (2017) <ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• National Academy of Sciences International Member (2018)<ref name="National Academy of Sciences 2018">Template:Cite web</ref>
• Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts (2024)<ref name="e444">Template:Cite web</ref>