Martin Grötschel (born 10 September 1948) 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, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

known for his research on

combinatorial optimization Combinatorial optimization is a subfield of mathematical optimization that consists of finding an optimal object from a finite set of objects, where the set of feasible solutions is discrete or can be reduced to a discrete set. Typical combi ...

, polyhedral combinatorics, and

operations research Operations research ( en-GB, operational research) (U.S. Air Force Specialty Code: Operations Analysis), often shortened to the initialism OR, is a discipline that deals with the development and application of analytical methods to improve deci ...

. From 1991 to 2012 he was Vice President of the

Zuse Institute Berlin The Zuse Institute Berlin (abbreviated ZIB, or ''Konrad-Zuse-Zentrum für Informationstechnik Berlin'') is a research institute for applied mathematics and computer science on the campus of Freie Universität Berlin in Dahlem, Berlin, Germany ...

(ZIB) and served from 2012 to 2015 as ZIB's President. From 2015 to 2020 he was President of the

Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities The Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (german: Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften), abbreviated BBAW, is the official academic society for the natural sciences and humanities for the States of Germany, German ...

(BBAW).

Biography

Grötschel was born in

Schwelm Schwelm is a town in the district of Ennepe-Ruhr-Kreis in the administrative region of Arnsberg within the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Geography Schwelm is situated in the southeast of the "''Ruhrgebiet''", the Ruhr district of Germany, ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

, and earned a diploma in mathematics with minor in economics in 1973 from the

University of Bochum The Ruhr University Bochum (, ) is a public research university located in the southern hills of the central Ruhr area, Bochum, Germany. It was founded in 1962 as the first new public university in Germany after World War II. Instruction began in ...

. He completed a doctorate in 1977 at the

University of Bonn The Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (german: Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn) is a public research university located in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the ( en, Rhine U ...

under the supervision of

Bernhard Korte Bernhard H. Korte (born November 3, 1938 in Bottrop, Germany) is a German mathematician and computer scientist, a professor at the University of Bonn, and an expert in combinatorial optimization. Biography Korte earned his doctorate ( Doctor rer ...

, and obtained his

habilitation Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in many European countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellence in research, teaching and further education, usually including a ...

at Bonn in the field

in 1981. One year later he was appointed full professor for applied mathematics at the

University of Augsburg The University of Augsburg (german: Universität Augsburg) is a university located in the Universitätsviertel section of Augsburg, Germany. It was founded in 1970 and is organized in 8 Faculties. The University of Augsburg is a relatively you ...

. From 1991 until his retirement at the end of September 2015 he was, while also engaged at

ZIB The byte is a units of information, unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character (computing), character of text in a computer and for this ...

, full professor for information technology at

Technical University Berlin The Technical University of Berlin (official name both in English and german: link=no, Technische Universität Berlin, also known as TU Berlin and Berlin Institute of Technology) is a public research university located in Berlin, Germany. It was ...

. Martin Grötschel was a member of the Executive Committee of the

German Mathematical Society The German Mathematical Society (german: Deutsche Mathematiker-Vereinigung, DMV) is the main professional society of German mathematicians and represents German mathematics within the European Mathematical Society (EMS) and the International Mathe ...

(Deutsche Mathematiker-Vereinigung (DMV)) from 1989 to 1996 and from 1993 to 1994 its President. From 1999 to 2014 he was a member of the Executive Committee of the

International Mathematical Union The International Mathematical Union (IMU) is an international non-governmental organization devoted to international cooperation in the field of mathematics across the world. It is a member of the International Science Council (ISC) and supports ...

(IMU) and from 2007 to 2014 IMU's General Secretary. Since 2011 he has been a member of the Executive Board of the Einstein Foundation Berlin and was from 2011 to 2015 its Chair. He was co-founder and longstanding Chair of the DFG Research Cente
Matheon
"Mathematics for key technologies". Martin Grötschel has been married since 1976 with his wif
Iris Grötschel
and has three daughters.

Work

Martin Grötschel is one of the most internationally renowned experts in the field of

. Martin Grötschel's main mathematical research fields are

graph theory In mathematics, graph theory is the study of ''graphs'', which are mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects. A graph in this context is made up of '' vertices'' (also called ''nodes'' or ''points'') which are conne ...

, linear and mixed-integer optimization and

. Already in his doctoral thesis, Grötschel achieved significant progress in the development of solution methods of the

Traveling Salesman Problem The travelling salesman problem (also called the travelling salesperson problem or TSP) asks the following question: "Given a list of cities and the distances between each pair of cities, what is the shortest possible route that visits each cit ...

, in particular, he contributed significantly to understanding the

cutting-plane method In mathematical optimization, the cutting-plane method is any of a variety of optimization methods that iteratively refine a feasible set or objective function by means of linear inequalities, termed ''cuts''. Such procedures are commonly used t ...

. His publications together with L. Lovász and A. Schrijver on the

ellipsoid method In mathematical optimization, the ellipsoid method is an iterative method for convex optimization, minimizing convex functions. When specialized to solving feasible linear optimization problems with rational data, the ellipsoid method is an algor ...

and its application in the combinatorial and convex optimization gained worldwide recognition. In recent years Martin Grötschel has mainly dealt (besides addressing "classical" mathematical problems) with mathematical modelling and solving real-world problems in economy and industry. The application areas he has worked in include optimization of production planning and control, public transport and energy systems, logistics and telecommunication. Since the early 1990s Grötschel has been working intensively in the fields electronic information and communication, library systems,

Open Access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre op ...

and Open Science and thereto participated in numerous national and international bodies and initiatives. The promotion of digital humanities is one of the main goals of Grötschel's

BBAW The Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (german: Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften), abbreviated BBAW, is the official academic society for the natural sciences and humanities for the States of Germany, German ...

presidency.

Awards and honors

Grötschel was one of the winners of the

Fulkerson Prize The Fulkerson Prize for outstanding papers in the area of discrete mathematics is sponsored jointly by the Mathematical Optimization Society (MOS) and the American Mathematical Society (AMS). Up to three awards of $1,500 each are presented at e ...

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, ...

in 1982 for his work with

László Lovász László Lovász (; born March 9, 1948) is a Hungarian mathematician and professor emeritus at Eötvös Loránd University, best known for his work in combinatorics, for which he was awarded the 2021 Abel Prize jointly with Avi Wigderson. He ...

and

Alexander Schrijver Alexander (Lex) Schrijver (born 4 May 1948 in Amsterdam) is a Dutch mathematician and computer scientist, a professor of discrete mathematics and optimization at the University of Amsterdam and a fellow at the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica in Ams ...

on applications of the

. In 2006 the same trio won the

John von Neumann Theory Prize The John von Neumann Theory Prize of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) is awarded annually to an individual (or sometimes a group) who has made fundamental and sustained contributions to theory in operati ...

of the

Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) is an international society for practitioners in the fields of operations research (O.R.), management science, and analytics. It was established in 1995 with the merger of ...

. The

Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) is a professional society dedicated to applied mathematics, computational science, and data science through research, publications, and community. SIAM is the world's largest scientific socie ...

and

Mathematical Optimization Society The Mathematical Optimization Society (MOS), known as the Mathematical Programming Society until 2010,George B. Dantzig Prize in 1991, and the

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft The German Research Foundation (german: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft ; DFG ) is a German research funding organization, which functions as a self-governing institution for the promotion of science and research in the Federal Republic of Germ ...

gave him the

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize The Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize (german: link=no, Förderpreis für deutsche Wissenschaftler im Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz-Programm der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft), in short Leibniz Prize, is awarded by the German Research Foundation to ...

in 1995. In 2004 he was awarded the

EURO Gold Medal The EURO Gold medal of the Association of European Operational Research Societies (EURO) is the highest distinction within Operations Research (OR) in Europe. The prize was first awarded to Hans-Jürgen Zimmermann in 1985. The medal is awarded ...

, the highest distinction within

Operations Research Operations research ( en-GB, operational research) (U.S. Air Force Specialty Code: Operations Analysis), often shortened to the initialism OR, is a discipline that deals with the development and application of analytical methods to improve deci ...

in Europe. He was an invited speaker at the 2006

International Congress of Mathematicians The International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) is the largest conference for the topic of mathematics. It meets once every four years, hosted by the International Mathematical Union (IMU). The Fields Medals, the Nevanlinna Prize (to be rename ...

. Grötschel received honorary doctorates from the

University of Karlsruhe The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT; german: Karlsruher Institut für Technologie) is a public research university in Karlsruhe, Germany. The institute is a national research center of the Helmholtz Association. KIT was created in 2009 w ...

in 2006, from the Vietnamese Academy of Sciences and Technology (VAST) in 2007, from the

Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg The Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg () (''OvGU'') was founded in 1993, making it one of the youngest universities in Germany. The university is located in Magdeburg, the Capital city of Saxony-Anhalt and has about 13.000 students in nine ...

in 2008 and from the

in 2011. Since 2011 he has been Distinguished Affiliated Professor of

Technical University of Munich The Technical University of Munich (TUM or TU Munich; german: Technische Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It specializes in engineering, technology, medicine, and applied and natural sciences. Establis ...

. Grötschel is member of seven national and international scientific academies: In 1995 he was a member the

, in 1999 he became Foreign Member of the US

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy ...

(NAE) for "contributions to combinatorial optimization and its applications", since 2003 he has been a member of the Deutsche Akademie der Technikwissenschaften (

acatech Acatech (styled ''acatech),'' founded in 2002 and established as the German Academy of Science and Engineering (german: Deutsche Akademie der Technikwissenschaften) on 1 January 2008, represents the interests of German technical sciences independe ...

), since 2005 of the

German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina The German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (german: Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina – Nationale Akademie der Wissenschaften), short Leopoldina, is the national academy of Germany, and is located in Halle (Saale). Founded ...

, since 2015 of the

Chinese Academy of Sciences The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS); ), known by Academia Sinica in English until the 1980s, is the national academy of the People's Republic of China for natural sciences. It has historical origins in the Academia Sinica during the Republ ...

(CAS) as Foreign Member, since 2016 of The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) for the advancement of science in the developing countries as Fellow, and in 2017 he was elected a member of the Academy of Europe

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 ...

. In 2013, a

festschrift In academia, a ''Festschrift'' (; plural, ''Festschriften'' ) is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the h ...

was published in his honor.

Selected publications

* * *

References

External links

Grötschel's homepage
at Zuse Institute Berlin {{DEFAULTSORT:Grotschel, Martin Living people 1948 births 20th-century German mathematicians Ruhr University Bochum alumni University of Bonn alumni University of Augsburg faculty Technical University of Berlin faculty Members of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina Foreign associates of the National Academy of Engineering Foreign members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize winners John von Neumann Theory Prize winners 21st-century German mathematicians