Katrin Wehrheim

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Katrin Wehrheim 2013

Katrin Wehrheim (born January 1, 1974 in Germany ) is a German mathematician and university professor . She is an associate professor of mathematics at the University of California at Berkeley. Her research focuses on symplectic topology and gauge theory . She is known for her research on pseudoholomorphic quilts .

life and work

After attending school in Hamburg, Wehrheim studied at the University of Hamburg until 1995 . She then studied at Imperial College London until 1996 and then at ETH Zurich . Here she did her doctorate in 2002 with Dusa McDuff and Dietmar Salamon with the dissertation Anti-Self-Dual Instantons with Lagrangian Boundary Conditions . She then taught at Princeton University and was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study before joining the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2012 . She has been teaching math at the University of California at Berkeley since 2013 .

In June 2020, she was one of a group of ten mathematicians who, in a letter to the Notices of the American Mathematical Society due for publication in October, called for a boycott of the development of algorithms and software for predictive policing . These software programs are used to predict further criminal offenses in certain areas at certain times. The call relates to the discussions about racism in the American police force after the death of George Floyd . They see the use of the software as being distorted by structural racism. Dark-skinned people would be controlled more intensely and if they offered resistance it would have a self-reinforcing effect on the respective neighborhoods. Although the universities after Wehrheim condemned the racist attacks in the American police, after Wehrheim they should also take action themselves when the mathematics, as in the predictive policing programs, gives racism the appearance of objectivity. In the interview she says she does not speak out against working with the police in principle, one should just not work on things that have been proven to be racist.

Awards

Fonts (selection)

  • K. Wehrheim and C. Woodward: Quilted Floer cohomology. Geometry & Topology, 14: 833-902, 2010.
  • K. Wehrheim and C. Woodward: Floer cohomology and geometric composition of Lagrangian correspondences. Advances in Mathematics, 230: 177-228, 2012.
  • D. McDuff and K. Wehrheim: Smooth Kuranishi atlases with isotropy. Geometry & Topology, 21: 2725-2809, 2017.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Piotr Heller, Racist Math? , Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, No. 26, June 28, 2020, p. 56
  2. ↑ Interview on Deutschlandfunk , June 23, 2020
personal data
SURNAME Wehrheim, Katrin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German mathematician and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH 1st January 1974
PLACE OF BIRTH Germany