Günter M. Ziegler
German mathematician
Günter Matthias Ziegler (born 19 May 1963) is a German mathematician who has been working as president of the Free University of Berlin since 2018. Ziegler is known for his research in discrete mathematics and geometry, and particularly on the combinatorics of polytopes.
Biography
Ziegler studied at LMU Munich from 1981 to 1984, and went on to receive his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1987, under the supervision of Anders Björner. After postdoctoral positions at the University of Augsburg and the Mittag-Leffler Institute, he received his habilitation in 1992 from Technische Universität Berlin, which he joined as a professor in 1995. Ziegler has since joined the faculty of the Free University of Berlin.
Awards and honors
Ziegler was awarded the one million Deutschmark Gerhard Hess Prize by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) in 1994 and the 1.5 million Deutschmark Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize, Germany's highest research honor, by the DFG in 2001. He was awarded the 2005 Gauss Lectureship by the German Mathematical Society. In 2006, the Mathematical Association of America awarded Ziegler and Florian Pfender its highest honor for mathematical exposition, the Chauvenet Prize, for their paper on kissing numbers.
In 2006 Ziegler became president of the German Mathematical Society for a two-year term. In 2009, the European Research Council (ERC) awarded Ziegler one of the ERC Advanced Grants in the amount of 1.85 million Euros.
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