Karl-Theodor "Theo" Sturm (born 7.November 1960) is a German

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

working in

stochastic analysis Stochastic calculus is a branch of mathematics that operates on stochastic processes. It allows a consistent theory of integration to be defined for integrals of stochastic processes with respect to stochastic processes. This field was created ...

Life and work

After obtaining his Abitur from the Platen-Gymnasium Ansbach in 1980, Sturm began to study Mathematics and Physics at the

University of Erlangen-Nuremberg A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase ''universitas magistrorum et scholarium'', which ...

where he graduated in 1986 with the Diploma in Mathematics and the State Examination in Mathematics and Physics. In 1989, he obtained his PhD (with a thesis on „Perturbation of Hunt processes by signed additive functionals“) under the supervision of

Heinz Bauer Heinz Bauer (31 January 1928 – 15 August 2002) was a German mathematician. Bauer studied at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and received his PhD there in 1953 under the supervision of Otto Haupt and finished his habilitation in 1956, bo ...

and in 1993 he received his habilitation. Visiting and research positions led him to the universities of Stanford, Zurich, and Bonn as well as to the MPI Leipzig. In 1994, he was awarded a Heisenberg fellowship of the DFG. Since 1997, he is professor of mathematics at the University of Bonn. From 2002 to 2012, he was vice spokesman and member of the executive board of the

Collaborative Research Center The Collaborative Research Center is a building on the Rockefeller University The Rockefeller University is a private biomedical research and graduate-only university in New York City, New York. It focuses primarily on the biological and ...

611 "Singular Phenomena in Mathematical Models"; since 2013, he is member of the executive board of the Collaborative Research Center 1060 "The Mathematics of Emergent Effects". From 2007 to 2010, he was Managing Director of the Institute for Applied Mathematics. Since 2012, he is Coordinator (Managing Director) of the Cluster of Excellence " Hausdorff Center for Mathematics". The focus of his research is in

Stochastic Stochastic (, ) refers to the property of being well described by a random probability distribution. Although stochasticity and randomness are distinct in that the former refers to a modeling approach and the latter refers to phenomena themselve ...

and

Geometric Analysis Geometric analysis is a mathematical discipline where tools from differential equations, especially elliptic partial differential equations (PDEs), are used to establish new results in differential geometry and differential topology In mathem ...

. He gained particular attention with his work on ‚Analysis on local Dirichlet spaces’, 1993-1995, where he introduced geometric concepts for the investigation of stochastic processes and carried over methods from elliptic regularity theory to singular operators on abstract spaces, as well as with his pioneering work on synthetic Ricci bounds for metric measure spaces. The latter was developed in scientific competition with John Lott and

Cédric Villani Cédric Patrice Thierry Villani (; born 5 October 1973) is a French politician and mathematician working primarily on partial differential equations, Riemannian geometry and mathematical physics. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 2010, and he ...

– which in turn also found recognition in the Laudations for Villani’s Fields Medal. In 2016, he was awarded an ERC Advanced Grant for his research project "Metric measure spaces and Ricci curvature – analytic, geometric, and probabilistic challenges". In 2021, he was Plenary Speaker at the 8th

European Congress of Mathematics The European Congress of Mathematics (ECM) is the second largest international conference of the mathematics community, after the International Congresses of Mathematicians (ICM). The ECM are held every four years and are timed precisely betwee ...

in Portoroz ("Metric measure spaces and synthetic Ricci bounds"). In 2022, Sturm was elected a member of the

Academia Europaea The Academia Europaea is a pan-European Academy of Humanities, Letters, Law, and Sciences. The Academia was founded in 1988 as a functioning Europe-wide Academy that encompasses all fields of scholarly inquiry. It acts as co-ordinator of Europea ...

.Member List of the Academia Europeae
retrieved 2022-07-21. Many young researchers received important stimuli for future research during their postdoc with Sturm, among them Shin-ichi Ohta, Nicola Gigli, Kazumasa Kuwada, Jan Maas, Fabio Cavalletti, and Sebastian Andres.

Selected publications

Sturm, K.-T. Super-Ricci flows for metric measure spaces. I, (2016
arXiv:1603.02193
Erbar, M., Kuwada, K., and Sturm, K.-T. On the equivalence of the Entropic curvature-dimension condition and Bochner’s inequality on metric measure spaces, (2013
arXiv:1303.4382
Sturm, K.-T. The space of spaces: curvature bounds and gradient flows on the space of metric measure spaces, (2012
arXiv:1208.0434
Huesmann, M., and Sturm, K.-T
Optimal transport from Lebesgue to Poisson
''The Annals of Probability 41'', 4 (2013), 2426–2478. Ohta, S.-I., and Sturm, K.-T
Non-contraction of heat flow on Minkowski spaces
''Archive for Rational Mechanics and Analysis 204'', 3 (2012), 917-944. Von Renesse, M.-K., and Sturm, K.-T
Entropic measure and Wasserstein diffusion
''The Annals of Probability 37'', 3 (2009), 1114-1191. Sturm, K.-T
On the geometry of metric measure spaces II
''Acta Mathematica 196'', 1 (2006), 133-177. Sturm, K.-T
On the geometry of metric measure spaces
''Acta Mathematica 196'', 1 (2006), 65-131. Von Renesse, M.-K., and Sturm, K.-T
Transport inequalities, gradient estimates, entropy and Ricci curvature
''Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics 58'', 7 (2005), 923-940. Sturm, K.-T
Analysis on local Dirichlet spaces – III
''Journal de Mathématiques Pures et Appliquées 75'' (1996), 273-297. Sturm, K.-T
Analysis on local Dirichlet spaces – II
''Osaka Journal of Mathematics 32'' (1995), 275-312. Sturm, K.-T
Analysis on local Dirichlet spaces – I
''Journal für die reine und angewandte Mathematik 456'' (1994), 173-196.

References

External links

Karl-Theodor Sturm at the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics

Collaborative Research Center 611 "Singular Phenomena in Mathematical Models"

Collaborative Research Center 1060 "The Mathematics of Emergent Effects"

Hausdorff Center for Mathematics

Press releases of the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics

Fields Medal: Work profile by Julie Rehmeyer and Laudation by Hong-Tzer Yau for Cédric Villani
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sturm, Karl-Theodor Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 20th-century German mathematicians University of Erlangen-Nuremberg alumni Academic staff of the University of Bonn 21st-century German mathematicians