News Release

Günter M. Ziegler wins 2008 Communicator Award

Mathematician from Berlin to receive €50,000 for outstanding communication of science to the public

Grant and Award Announcement

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

This release is available in German.

Mathematician Günter M. Ziegler is the winner of this year’s Communicator Award, granted by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) and the Donors' Association for the Promotion of Sciences and Humanities in Germany. Ziegler is a professor at the Berlin Institute of Technology. He was selected in recognition of his outstanding ability to communicate his research work in discrete mathematics to the general public in a fresh and innovative way.

The Communicator Award is Germany's highest distinction for the communication of research findings to the general public. It has been conferred by the DFG and the Donors' Association since 2000 to scientists and researchers who have conveyed their research findings to the general public in a particularly varied, original or creative manner and who have rendered outstanding services to the increasingly important dialogue between the scientific community and the public. The winners are selected by an award panel consisting of science journalists and communications and PR experts. This year, 51 nominations and applications were received from researchers working in all scientific disciplines, almost twice as many as in 2007. The applications and nominations were all of outstanding quality, and 13 of the candidates were short-listed, with Ziegler being the final choice.

In selecting Ziegler, a 44-year-old professor at the Berlin Institute of Technology, the award panel has given recognition to a young and unconventional scientist who has succeeded in making a positive impact on the public image and public perception of mathematics, which is still often misunderstood and unpopular. Ziegler has won the award in the “Year of Mathematics,” which he, as President of the German Mathematical Society (DMV), is very involved in and personally dedicated to, together with the “Redaktionsbüro Mathematik” (“Mathematics Editorial Office”), which he initiated. However, this was not the deciding factor in his selection, as the panel emphasised. Ziegler is a worthy recipient of the award.

Indeed, Ziegler has been actively approaching the public and the media for about ten years, in his endeavours to communicate the importance of mathematics and his particular field, discrete geometry, in a comprehensible manner. In doing so, he has used forms and formats that are not only unusual, but also highly effective, some of which he developed personally. His “Math Quiz” and “Science Café”, in which he engages in dialogue with scientists from other disciplines, have enjoyed particular success. These events, which regularly attract an audience in the hundreds, are accompanied by numerous articles and columns in newspapers and magazines as well as appearances on radio and television.

His dedication as a scientific organiser, in particular in the DMV, also attracts great publicity. Between 1997 and 2000 he was the editor of the magazine “DMV-Mitteilungen”, which he transformed from a mundane members’ magazine into a vibrant publication. His own column in the magazine, “Mathematik im Alltag” (Mathematics in Everyday Life) in which he has looked at the consequences of 25 mathematical phenomena on our everyday lives, has a large fan base even outside the mathematic community and is now also published online as a science blog. Ziegler has been the President of the DMV since 2006, and in this position he has created new opportunities of presenting his subject to the public, for instance by founding the “DMV Abitur Preis” a prize for high-achieving secondary school pupils.

With his book “Proofs from THE BOOK” (co-authored with Martin Aigner) he has published an international science bestseller. This book presents key mathematical concepts with such clarity that even the lay person can genuinely enjoy a mathematical discussion and become fascinated by this discipline. Published ten years ago, initially in English, it has now had a print run of at least 40,000 and has been translated into ten different languages.

This great success in communicating mathematics makes Ziegler the prototype of a good communicator in the eyes of the DFG and the Donors’ Association. “You can never have enough mathematics, even as an ordinary person, because it is essential to understanding the world around us,” said the President of the Donors’ Association, Dr. Arend Oetker, on the occasion of the announcement of the winner of this year’s award. The President of the DFG, Professor Matthias Kleiner, highlighted the fact that “Ziegler’s commitment to the communication of science is closely linked to his excellent achievements as a scientist.” Having obtained his doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) at just 24 years of age and been appointed as a professor at 32, he is also the winner of the DFG’s Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize, Germany's most prestigious research-funding prize, in 2001. As a member of the Berlin Mathematical School and the DFG Research Centre Matheon, Ziegler is a modern icon of top-flight research in mathematics.

Ziegler is the ninth winner of the Communicator Award. Previous winners have included the astrophysicist Harald Lesch, the Catholic theologian Hubert Wolf and the palaeobiologist Friedemann Schrenk, who has done extensive research about Africa. Last year the award was won by the Working Group on Glaciology at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven, the first research team to win the prize.

This year’s Communicator Award will be presented on 3 July during this year's Summer of Science in Leipzig by the presidents of the DFG and the Donors' Association, Professor Matthias Kleiner and Dr. Arend Oetker. The prize money is donated by the Donors' Association, which has a membership of more than 3,000 companies and private individuals and which promotes interaction and discussion between the scientific community and the general public. In addition to the prize money, Günter M. Ziegler will also be presented with a hologram representing the Communicator Award. The hologram, created by the Cologne artist Michael Bleyenberg, underlines the significance of transparency in science and expresses the importance of looking at things “in the right light.” Just like the hologram, it is only then that science can truly shine.

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Further Information:

Further information about the Communicator Award can be found at www.dfg.de/en/research_funding/scientific_prizes/communicator_award.html

Günter M. Ziegler’s website can be found at www.math.tu-berlin.de/~ziegler

Thomas Vogt
Editorial Office for the Year of Mathematics, TU Berlin
Tel. +49 30 314-78788, E-mail: vogt@jahr-der-mathematik.de

Dr. Kristina R. Zerges
TU Berlin, Press and Information Office
Tel. +49 30 314-23922, E-mail: zerges@tu-berlin.de


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