The von Kaven Award of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) will be presented this year to Dr. Manuel Amann in recognition of his outstanding contribution to differential geometry and topology. Since October 2017, Amann has been researching in the differential geometry group at the University of Augsburg with a DFG Heisenberg fellowship, working on Lie group operations in geometry and topology. The von Kaven Award, which is worth €10,000, is being conferred for the eleventh time and will be presented on 23 October 2017 in conjunction with the Gauß lecture given under the auspices of the German Mathematical Society (DMV) in Regensburg. The laudation will be given by Prof. Dr. Christian Bär from the University of Potsdam, who is also a member of the DFG review board for mathematics.
Manuel Amann (38) studied mathematics and computer science at the University of Würzburg and in 2009 completed his doctorate on positive quaternionic Kähler manifolds at the University of Münster. In 2015 he completed his habilitation at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology with a dissertation on 'Modelling Geometry in Algebra - Curvature, Holonomy and Actions'. He has spent periods working at the universities of Toronto and Pennsylvania, the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn, the Instituto Nacional de Matemática Pura e Aplicada (IMPA) in Rio de Janeiro and the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) in Berkeley. In 2016, Amann successfully applied to the DFG's Heisenberg Programme, which enables researchers eligible for a professorship to continue working on high-quality projects and developing their scientific reputation at the institution of their choice. Between April 2016 and March 2017, Amann held a temporary professorship at the University of Bonn.
Manuel Amann's research work focuses on the interface between Riemannian geometry and algebraic topology. Among other things, he is interested in the question of how symmetrical curved spaces are and how curved those with symmetries are. In ongoing work, he intends to investigate this and other mathematical questions with a focus on the use of algebraic methods.
The von Kaven Award is generally presented to early career researchers in mathematics in the Heisenberg Programme to honour special achievements. The recipient is selected by the DFG's mathematics review board. The prize money is provided by the foundation of the same name, which the mathematician Herbert von Kaven and the DFG established jointly in 2004. Von Kaven, a native of Detmold, was particularly interested in the fundamental aspects of mathematics and throughout his life campaigned for their funding. He died in 2009 at the age of 101.
The von Kaven Award is presented in connection with the Gauß lecture, which is organised by the DMV. Delivered by renowned mathematicians, the lectures introduce interested members of the public to the latest developments in mathematics. In Regensburg, Prof. Dr. Cédric Villani will give a lecture entitled 'On Triangles, Gases, Prices and Men'. Villani was awarded the Fields Medal in 2010 and was also elected to France's National Assembly in the 2017 parliamentary elections.
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Further Information
Media contact:
DFG Press and Public Relations, Tel. +49 228 885-2109, presse@dfg.de
Programme contact at DFG Head Office: Dr. Frank Kiefer, Physics, Mathematics Division, Tel. +49 228 885-2567, frank.kiefer@dfg.de
For more information about the 2017 von Kaven Award, go to http://www.dfg.de/en/funded_projects/prizewinners/von_kaven_award
For more information about the DFG's Heisenberg Programme, go to http://www.dfg.de/heisenberg/en/
For more information about the German Mathematical Society's Gauß lecture, go to http://www.mathematik.de/dmv/gauss-vorlesungen