Helmut Hofer (mathematician)
Helmut Hermann W. Hofer (born February 28, 1956 in Sinzig ) is a German-American mathematician.
Life
Hofer attended the Fichte-Gymnasium in Krefeld (Abitur 1974). He studied mathematics at the University of Zurich (diploma 1979), where he received his doctorate in 1981 under Peter Hess (A Variational Approach to a Class of Resonance Problems with Application to a Wave Equation Problem). From 1979 to 1982 he was an assistant in Zurich and from 1983 to 1985 lecturer at the University of Bath . In 1985 he became an Assistant Professor, 1987 Associate Professor and 1988 Professor at Rutgers University . From 1989 he was a professor at the Ruhr University Bochum (of which he was dean from 1992/93) and from 1993 to 1997 professor at the ETH Zurich . From 1997 he was Professor at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University , from 2006 as Silver Professor. In 2009 he accepted a position at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton , of which he was a member in 1987, 2001/02 and 2005. He has been visiting professor at the University of Paris-Dauphine , at the MSRI (1988) in Berkeley , at the Isaac Newton Institute in Cambridge , the Pennsylvania State University , Stanford University and at the Institute Henri Poincaré in Paris (1994). In addition to German citizenship, he also has US citizenship.
Hofer is a leading scientist in the field of symplectic geometry (which describes, for example, the geometry of Hamiltonian dynamic systems) and one of the founders of symplectic topology. At the end of the 1980s he and Ivar Ekeland introduced new invariants (symplectic capacities) there. He also worked closely with Andreas Floer in the 1980s. He made important advances in proving variants of the Arnold conjecture in symplectic geometry and the Weinstein conjecture.
From 1987 to 1989 he was a Sloan Research Fellow . In 1999 he received the Ostrowski Prize . In 2013 he was awarded the Heinz Hopf Prize . He has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences and Academia Europaea since 2008, a member of the Leopoldina since 2010 and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2020. In 1990 he was invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in Kyoto ( Symplectic invariants ) and he gave a plenary lecture at the ICM in Berlin 1998 ( Dynamics, Topology and Holomorphic Curves ). He is a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society .
Fonts
- with Eduard Zehnder : Symplectic invariants and hamiltonian dynamics , Birkhäuser, Basel / Boston / Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-7643-5066-0 .
- with Clifford Taubes , Alan Weinstein , Eduard Zehnder (editors): The Floer memorial volume , Birkhäuser, 1995, ISBN 3-7643-5044-X .
Web links
- Homepage at the Courant Institute
- Helmut Hofer in the Mathematics Genealogy Project (English)
- Communication from the IAS on the appointment of Hofer
- Author profile of Helmut Hofer in the zbMATH database
- Videos by Helmut Hofer in the AV portal of the Technical Information Library
Individual evidence
- ↑ Helmut Hofer: A variational approach to a class of resonance problems with application to a wave equation problem , 1981, p. 59 (dissertation)
- ↑ Member entry by Prof. Dr. Helmut Hofer (with picture and CV) at the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina , accessed on July 15, 2016.
- ↑ Helmut Hofer: Dynamics, Topology and Holomorphic Curves , Documenta Mathematica Extra Volume ICM I, 1998, pp. 255-280
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Hofer, Helmut |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Hofer, Helmut Hermann W. |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German-American mathematician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 28, 1956 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Sinzig |