Michael Weiss (born 14 December 1955) is a German mathematician and an expert in

algebraic and geometric topology '' Algebraic & Geometric Topology'' is a peer-reviewed mathematics journal published quarterly by Mathematical Sciences Publishers. Established in 2001, the journal publishes articles on topology. Its 2018 MCQ was 0.82, and its 2018 impact factor ...

. He is a professor at the

University of Münster The University of Münster (german: Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, WWU) is a public university, public research university located in the city of Münster, North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. With more than 43,000 students and over ...

Life

He completed his PhD in 1982 at the

University of Warwick The University of Warwick ( ; abbreviated as ''Warw.'' in post-nominal letters) is a public research university on the outskirts of Coventry between the West Midlands (county), West Midlands and Warwickshire, England. The university was founded i ...

under the supervision of Brian Sanderson. He was then affiliated as a researcher with the Institute of Advanced Scientific Studies near Paris and the universities of

Bielefeld Bielefeld () is a city in the Ostwestfalen-Lippe Region in the north-east of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. With a population of 341,755, it is also the most populous city in the administrative region (''Regierungsbezirk'') of Detmold and the ...

Edinburgh Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian ...

, and

Göttingen Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, t ...

. In 1999, he joined the faculty of

Aberdeen University , mottoeng = The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom , established = , type = Public research universityAncient university , endowment = £58.4 million (2021) , budget ...

where he stayed until 2011, when he was awarded a

Alexander von Humboldt Professorship The Alexander von Humboldt Professorship is an academic prize named after Alexander von Humboldt and awarded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation since 2008. The prize is intended to attract internationally leading scientists from abroad to Ger ...

at the University of Münster.

Academic Work

His research is on

algebraic topology Algebraic topology is a branch of mathematics that uses tools from abstract algebra to study topological spaces. The basic goal is to find algebraic invariant (mathematics), invariants that classification theorem, classify topological spaces up t ...

and

differential topology In mathematics, differential topology is the field dealing with the topological properties and smooth properties of smooth manifolds. In this sense differential topology is distinct from the closely related field of differential geometry, which ...

. In work with

Ib Madsen Ib Henning Madsen (born 12 April 1942, in Copenhagen)Curriculum vitae
retrieved 3 February 2013. is a Dan ...

, he resolved the Mumford Conjecture about rational

characteristic class In mathematics, a characteristic class is a way of associating to each principal bundle of ''X'' a cohomology class of ''X''. The cohomology class measures the extent the bundle is "twisted" and whether it possesses sections. Characteristic classes ...

es of

surface bundle In mathematics, a surface bundle is a bundle in which the fiber is a surface. When the base space is a circle the total space is three-dimensional and is often called a surface bundle over the circle. See also *Mapping torus In mathematics, the ...

s in the limit as the genus tends to infinity.

Allen Hatcher Allen, Allen's or Allens may refer to: Buildings * Allen Arena, an indoor arena at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee * Allen Center, a skyscraper complex in downtown Houston, Texas * Allen Fieldhouse, an indoor sports arena on the Univer ...

,
A Short Exposition of the Madsen–Weiss Theorem
' Building on earlier work of Thomas Goodwillie, he developed Embedding Calculus, a

Calculus of functors In algebraic topology, a branch of mathematics, the calculus of functors or Goodwillie calculus is a technique for studying functors by approximating them by a sequence of simpler functors; it generalizes the sheafification of a presheaf. This sequ ...

for embeddings of manifolds.

Recognition

In 2006, he was awarded the

Fröhlich Prize The Fröhlich Prize of the London Mathematical Society is awarded in even numbered years in memory of Albrecht Fröhlich. The prize is awarded for original and extremely innovative work in any branch of mathematics. According to the regulations ...

of the

London Mathematical Society The London Mathematical Society (LMS) is one of the United Kingdom's learned societies for mathematics (the others being the Royal Statistical Society (RSS), the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (IMA), the Edinburgh Mathematical S ...

Publications

* *

References

External links

Website at the University of Münster
1955 births Living people Topologists 20th-century German mathematicians 21st-century German mathematicians Academic staff of the University of Münster Alumni of the University of Warwick Place of birth missing (living people) {{Germany-mathematician-stub