Register now: 06.06.2025 von Staudt Prize award ceremony
On Friday, June 6, 2025, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg will award the Karl Georg Christian von Staudt Prize for the ninth time. This is the most highly endowed German prize for mathematics.
In recognition of his pioneering work in the field of modern algebraic topology and group theory, the prize is awarded to
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Lück (Universität Bonn)
The award ceremony will take place on 06.06.2025 from 10-16h at the Erlangen Südgelände. The events are open to the public and we look forward to a large number of participants.
Program
Date: 06.06.2025
Location: Emmy-Noether-Hörsaal H12, Cauerstraße 11, 91058 Erlangen
Visitor parking lot
Ceremony at 10:00 am
Welcome
Prof. Dr. Joachim Hornegger (Präsident der Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg)
Greeting
Prof. Dr. Jürg Kramer (Präsident der Deutschen Mathematiker-Vereinigung, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
Laudatio
Prof. Dr. Thomas Schick (Universität Göttingen)
Awarding the 9th Karl Georg Christian von Staudt Prize
to Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Lück (Universität Bonn)
Reception
Staudt Colloquium at 02:00 pm
With lectures by
Prof. Dr. Clara Löh (Universität Regensburg)
and
Prof. Dr. Arthur Bartels (Universität Münster)
Registration
Note on accommodation
If you require overnight accommodation in Erlangen, we recommend that you book early, as the Erlangen Bergkirchweih takes place at the same time.
General Information
Last year, the ‘Scientific Commission of the Society for Mathematical Research’ nominated Mr. Wolfgang Lück for the Staudt Prize. Here is a quote from their statement:
Wolfgang Lück is a mathematician whose profound contributions have shaped the landscape of modern algebraic topology, group theory, and beyond.
Born in 1957, Wolfgang Lück embarked on his academic journey at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, where he completed his Ph.D. in 1984 under the mentorship of Professor Tammo tom Dieck, a leading figure in algebraic topology in Germany. Since those early years, Wolfgang Lück has risen to prominence, holding positions at institutions such as the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, and later at the University of Münster.
Since 2010, he has been a professor at the University of Bonn, where his influence continues to resonate not only within Germany but also across the international mathematical landscape.
Wolfgang Lück’s work is renowned for its depth, versatility, and transformative effect on various fields of mathematics. Central to his contributions is the development and advancement of L^2-invariants, an area of ideas introduced by Michael Atiyah and Mikhail Gromov. These invariants encode rich geometric and topological information, offering insight into the structure of manifolds, which are pivotal in both theoretical physics and mathematics. His renowned Lück approximation theorem has become a cornerstone of the theory, elegantly connecting L^2-invariants with more classical topological invariants. His 2002 monograph on the subject remains the definitive reference for this area. Lück’s contributions to the Farrell-Jones conjecture are another shining achievement of his career. This conjecture, which pertains to the algebraic K- and L-theory of group rings, has far-reaching consequences in both topology and algebra. Together with his collaborators, he was able to prove numerous cases of the conjecture, including for hyperbolic groups, CAT(0) groups, and lattices in Lie groups. These results have not only enriched our understanding of group theory but also provided crucial implications for topological conjectures such as the Borel conjecture and the Novikov conjecture, which are fundamental in the theory of aspherical manifolds. His insights into these conjectures have inspired a generation of researchers to further investigate their connections to various fields.
What distinguishes Wolfgang Lück’s career is not only his remarkable research output but also his dedication to fostering the next generation of mathematicians. His influence extends well beyond his published work, as he has mentored numerous students and postdoctoral researchers, many of whom have gone on to hold prominent positions at leading institutions around the world. As a leader in German mathematics, Wolfgang Lück has also held key roles such as President of the Deutsche Mathematiker-Vereinigung (DMV) and Director of the Hausdorff Research Institute for Mathematics in Bonn.
In addition to his many contributions to mathematics, Wolfgang Lück has been widely recognized for his achievements. Among his numerous honors are the 2003 Max Planck Research Award, the 2008 Leibniz Prize, and a 2015 ERC Advanced Grant. His induction into the Leopoldina and his status as a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society are further testaments to his influence and stature in the international scientific community.
Professor Wolfgang Lück’s remarkable contributions to algebraic topology, his solutions to longstanding conjectures, and his commitment to mentoring young mathematicians make him an ideal recipient of the von Staudt Prize. His work embodies the highest ideals of mathematical excellence and innovation.
Wolfgang Lück is a mathematician whose profound contributions have shaped the landscape of modern algebraic topology, group theory, and beyond.
Born in 1957, Wolfgang Lück embarked on his academic journey at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, where he completed his Ph.D. in 1984 under the mentorship of Professor Tammo tom Dieck, a leading figure in algebraic topology in Germany. Since those early years, Wolfgang Lück has risen to prominence, holding positions at institutions such as the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, and later at the University of Münster.
Since 2010, he has been a professor at the University of Bonn, where his influence continues to resonate not only within Germany but also across the international mathematical landscape.
Wolfgang Lück’s work is renowned for its depth, versatility, and transformative effect on various fields of mathematics. Central to his contributions is the development and advancement of L^2-invariants, an area of ideas introduced by Michael Atiyah and Mikhail Gromov. These invariants encode rich geometric and topological information, offering insight into the structure of manifolds, which are pivotal in both theoretical physics and mathematics. His renowned Lück approximation theorem has become a cornerstone of the theory, elegantly connecting L^2-invariants with more classical topological invariants. His 2002 monograph on the subject remains the definitive reference for this area. Lück’s contributions to the Farrell-Jones conjecture are another shining achievement of his career. This conjecture, which pertains to the algebraic K- and L-theory of group rings, has far-reaching consequences in both topology and algebra. Together with his collaborators, he was able to prove numerous cases of the conjecture, including for hyperbolic groups, CAT(0) groups, and lattices in Lie groups. These results have not only enriched our understanding of group theory but also provided crucial implications for topological conjectures such as the Borel conjecture and the Novikov conjecture, which are fundamental in the theory of aspherical manifolds. His insights into these conjectures have inspired a generation of researchers to further investigate their connections to various fields.
What distinguishes Wolfgang Lück’s career is not only his remarkable research output but also his dedication to fostering the next generation of mathematicians. His influence extends well beyond his published work, as he has mentored numerous students and postdoctoral researchers, many of whom have gone on to hold prominent positions at leading institutions around the world. As a leader in German mathematics, Wolfgang Lück has also held key roles such as President of the Deutsche Mathematiker-Vereinigung (DMV) and Director of the Hausdorff Research Institute for Mathematics in Bonn.
In addition to his many contributions to mathematics, Wolfgang Lück has been widely recognized for his achievements. Among his numerous honors are the 2003 Max Planck Research Award, the 2008 Leibniz Prize, and a 2015 ERC Advanced Grant. His induction into the Leopoldina and his status as a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society are further testaments to his influence and stature in the international scientific community.
Professor Wolfgang Lück’s remarkable contributions to algebraic topology, his solutions to longstanding conjectures, and his commitment to mentoring young mathematicians make him an ideal recipient of the von Staudt Prize. His work embodies the highest ideals of mathematical excellence and innovation.
From: Zur Geschichte der Erlanger Mathematik, by Wulf-Dieter Geyer:
In 1835, Karl Georg Christian von Staudt (1798-1867) succeeded Pfaff. For the first time, the Erlangen professorship was held by a representative who excelled in both teaching and research in mathematics, whose name remains internationally recognized to this day. Coming from an old patrician family from Rothenburg, he had studied in Göttingen under Gauss, earned his doctorate in Erlangen in 1823, and simultaneously took the teaching qualification examination in Munich. As a mathematics professor at the Würzburg study institute, he received the Venia legendi (authorization to teach) from the local university in 1824, enjoyed great success in his lectures offered alongside his gymnasium duties, but encountered conflicts with the faculty, who insisted that he give a lecture that would have cost him too much time. Thus, he moved to Nuremberg in 1827, where he taught at the study institute and the polytechnic (the present-day technical university). On the list of candidates for the Erlangen Faculty of Philosophy, von Staudt appeared despite a modest publication record even before the then highly regarded Martin Ohm, likely due to Gauss’s praise. The development fully justified the faculty’s choice. Von Staudt became a highly original and significant mathematician. On one hand, he researched the nature of the Bernoulli numbers, to which he dedicated his program for entering the academic senate in 1845, which not only included determining the structure of the denominators of these fractions (the numerators remain a puzzle to this day) but also contained congruences rediscovered by Kummer and which now form the basis of the p-adic zeta function. Besides number theory, he also devoted himself particularly intensively to the foundations of projective geometry, which had already been inspired by the theory of perspective of the Italian painters of the Renaissance (Albrecht Dürer’s treatise on this subject made the theory known in Germany), but as a mathematical discipline, fully encompassing the complex, it had only been developed in an analytical manner in the 19th century by Poncelet. Von Staudt set himself the task of developing this discipline on a geometric (synthetic) basis, just as Euclid developed Euclidean geometry in his Elements. In his “Geometry of Position” published in 1847, and in three subsequent contributions to it (1856, 1857, 1860), which have double the volume of the first book, he developed this geometry of the straightedge from the ground up without reference to Euclidean geometry, without measuring lengths and angles, and especially without a compass. He even gave a purely geometric interpretation to the complex quantities introduced by Poncelet. He also outlined progress toward a quadratic geometry in a paper published in his year of death. His work has inspired geometers to this day and earned him the honorary title “modern Euclid.”
In 1835, Karl Georg Christian von Staudt (1798-1867) succeeded Pfaff. For the first time, the Erlangen professorship was held by a representative who excelled in both teaching and research in mathematics, whose name remains internationally recognized to this day. Coming from an old patrician family from Rothenburg, he had studied in Göttingen under Gauss, earned his doctorate in Erlangen in 1823, and simultaneously took the teaching qualification examination in Munich. As a mathematics professor at the Würzburg study institute, he received the Venia legendi (authorization to teach) from the local university in 1824, enjoyed great success in his lectures offered alongside his gymnasium duties, but encountered conflicts with the faculty, who insisted that he give a lecture that would have cost him too much time. Thus, he moved to Nuremberg in 1827, where he taught at the study institute and the polytechnic (the present-day technical university). On the list of candidates for the Erlangen Faculty of Philosophy, von Staudt appeared despite a modest publication record even before the then highly regarded Martin Ohm, likely due to Gauss’s praise. The development fully justified the faculty’s choice. Von Staudt became a highly original and significant mathematician. On one hand, he researched the nature of the Bernoulli numbers, to which he dedicated his program for entering the academic senate in 1845, which not only included determining the structure of the denominators of these fractions (the numerators remain a puzzle to this day) but also contained congruences rediscovered by Kummer and which now form the basis of the p-adic zeta function. Besides number theory, he also devoted himself particularly intensively to the foundations of projective geometry, which had already been inspired by the theory of perspective of the Italian painters of the Renaissance (Albrecht Dürer’s treatise on this subject made the theory known in Germany), but as a mathematical discipline, fully encompassing the complex, it had only been developed in an analytical manner in the 19th century by Poncelet. Von Staudt set himself the task of developing this discipline on a geometric (synthetic) basis, just as Euclid developed Euclidean geometry in his Elements. In his “Geometry of Position” published in 1847, and in three subsequent contributions to it (1856, 1857, 1860), which have double the volume of the first book, he developed this geometry of the straightedge from the ground up without reference to Euclidean geometry, without measuring lengths and angles, and especially without a compass. He even gave a purely geometric interpretation to the complex quantities introduced by Poncelet. He also outlined progress toward a quadratic geometry in a paper published in his year of death. His work has inspired geometers to this day and earned him the honorary title “modern Euclid.”
When the Erlangen mathematician Otto Haupt passed away in 1988 at the age of 102, he bequeathed his savings to the Otto and Edith Haupt Foundation; the proceeds from this fund are used to award the Karl Georg Christian von Staudt Prize for outstanding achievements in the field of mathematics within the German-speaking area.
The previous award recipients are as follows: