Bernd Sturmfels (born March 28, 1962 in

Kassel Kassel (; in Germany, spelled Cassel until 1926) is a city on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Regierungsbezirk Kassel and the district of the same name and had 201,048 inhabitants in December 2020 ...

West Germany West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...

) is a Professor of Mathematics and

Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

and is a director of the

Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences The Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences (MPI MiS) in Leipzig is a research institute of the Max Planck Society. Founded on March 1, 1996, the institute works on projects which apply mathematics in various areas of natural science ...

in Leipzig since 2017.

Education and career

He received his PhD in 1987 from the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle a ...

and the

Technische Universität Darmstadt The Technische Universität Darmstadt (official English name Technical University of Darmstadt, sometimes also referred to as Darmstadt University of Technology), commonly known as TU Darmstadt, is a research university in the city of Darmstadt ...

. After two postdoctoral years at the

Institute for Mathematics and its Applications The Institute for Mathematics and its Applications located at the University of Minnesota is an organization established in 1982 by the National Science Foundation (NSF) of the United States. Mission The primary mission of the IMA is to increase ...

Minneapolis Minneapolis () is the largest city in Minnesota, United States, and the county seat of Hennepin County. The city is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls. Minneapolis has its origins ...

, Minnesota, and the

Research Institute for Symbolic Computation The Research Institute for Symbolic Computation (RISC Linz) is a research institute in the area of symbolic computation, including automated theorem proving and computer algebra. It is located in Schloß Hagenberg in Hagenberg near Linz in Austria. ...

Linz Linz ( , ; cs, Linec) is the capital of Upper Austria and third-largest city in Austria. In the north of the country, it is on the Danube south of the Czech border. In 2018, the population was 204,846. In 2009, it was a European Capital of ...

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

, he taught at

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

, before joining

in 1995. His Ph.D. students include

Melody Chan Melody Tung Chan is an American mathematician and violinist who works as Associate Professor of Mathematics at Brown University. She is a winner of the Alice T. Schafer Prize and of the AWM–Microsoft Research Prize in Algebra and Number Theory ...

, Jesús A. De Loera, Mike Develin,

Diane Maclagan Diane Margaret Maclagan (born 1974) is a professor of mathematics at the University of Warwick. She is a researcher in combinatorial and computational commutative algebra and algebraic geometry, with an emphasis on toric varieties, Hilbert schemes ...

, Rekha R. Thomas, Caroline Uhler, and Cynthia Vinzant.

Contributions

Bernd Sturmfels has made contributions to a variety of areas of mathematics, including

algebraic geometry Algebraic geometry is a branch of mathematics, classically studying zeros of multivariate polynomials. Modern algebraic geometry is based on the use of abstract algebraic techniques, mainly from commutative algebra, for solving geometrical ...

commutative algebra Commutative algebra, first known as ideal theory, is the branch of algebra that studies commutative rings, their ideals, and modules over such rings. Both algebraic geometry and algebraic number theory build on commutative algebra. Prominent ...

discrete geometry Discrete geometry and combinatorial geometry are branches of geometry that study combinatorial properties and constructive methods of discrete geometric objects. Most questions in discrete geometry involve finite or discrete sets of basic geome ...

, Gröbner bases,

toric varieties In algebraic geometry, a toric variety or torus embedding is an algebraic variety containing an algebraic torus as an open dense subset, such that the action of the torus on itself extends to the whole variety. Some authors also require it to be no ...

tropical geometry In mathematics, tropical geometry is the study of polynomials and their geometric properties when addition is replaced with minimization and multiplication is replaced with ordinary addition: : x \oplus y = \min\, : x \otimes y = x + y. So f ...

, algebraic statistics, and

computational biology Computational biology refers to the use of data analysis, mathematical modeling and computational simulations to understand biological systems and relationships. An intersection of computer science, biology, and big data, the field also has fo ...

. He has written several highly cited papers in algebra with

Dave Bayer David Allen Bayer (born November 29, 1955) is an American mathematician known for his contributions in algebra and symbolic computation and for his consulting work in the movie industry. He is a professor of mathematics at Barnard College, Columbi ...

. He has authored or co-authored multiple books including '' Introduction to tropical geometry'' with Diane Maclagan.

Awards and honors

Sturmfels' honors include a National Young Investigator Fellowship, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, and a David and Lucile Packard Fellowship. In 1999 he received a

Lester R. Ford Award Lester is an ancient Anglo-Saxon surname and given name. Notable people and characters with the name include: People Given name * Lester Bangs (1948–1982), American music critic * Lester W. Bentley (1908–1972), American artist from Wisc ...

for his expository article ''Polynomial equations and convex polytopes''. He was awarded a

Miller A miller is a person who operates a Gristmill, mill, a machine to grind a grain (for example corn or wheat) to make flour. Mill (grinding), Milling is among the oldest of human occupations. "Miller", "Milne" and other variants are common surname ...

Research Professorship at the University of California Berkeley for 2000–2001. In 2018, he was awarded the

George David Birkhoff Prize The George David Birkhoff Prize in applied mathematics is awarded – jointly by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) – in honour of George David Birkhoff (1884–1944). It is curre ...

in Applied Mathematics. In 2012, he became a fellow of the

American Mathematical Society The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...

.List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society
retrieved 2013-08-05.

References

External links

Homepage at Berkeley
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Sturmfels, Bernd 1962 births Living people Scientists from Kassel 20th-century German mathematicians 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians University of Washington alumni Fellows of the American Mathematical Society UC Berkeley College of Engineering faculty Fellows of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Mathematics popularizers Technische Universität Darmstadt alumni Algebraic geometers Combinatorialists Sloan Research Fellows Algebraists Cornell University faculty 21st-century German mathematicians Academic staff of Max Planck Society Max Planck Institute directors

Education and career

Contributions

Awards and honors

References

Further reading

External links