Rüdiger Valk (born 5 August 1945) 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 ...

. From 1976 to 2010 he was Professor for Theoretical Computer Science (Informatics) at the ''Institut für Informatik'' (later ''Fachbereich Informatik'') of the

University of Hamburg The University of Hamburg (german: link=no, Universität Hamburg, also referred to as UHH) is a public research university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919 by combining the previous General Lecture System ('' Allgemeines Vor ...

, Germany.http://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/TGI/mitarbeiter/profs/valk_eng.html (accessed 30 July 2013) Valk studied mathematics 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 ...

(Germany). Supervised by

Wilfried Brauer Wilfried Brauer (8 August 1937 – 25 February 2014) was a German computer scientist and professor emeritus at Technical University of Munich. Life and work Brauer studied Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy at the Free University of Berlin. ...

, he continued studying for a

postgraduate degree Postgraduate or graduate education refers to academic or professional degrees, certificates, diplomas, or other qualifications pursued by post-secondary students who have earned an undergraduate ( bachelor's) degree. The organization and stru ...

at Bonn and received his PhD in Mathematics in 1974. In 1976 he became Professor for Theoretical Computer Science (Informatics). From 1985 until 2010 he was head of the research group on theoretical foundations of computer science (Theoretische Grundlagen der Informatik, TGI) at the University of Hamburg.

Research career

His early research is characterised by work on topological automata and systems,''Discrete and Continuous Realizations of General Time Systems.'' In: ''Journal of Cybernetics.'' 4 (1974) 4, pp. 43–52.''On Some Elementary Properties of Uniform Automata.'' In: ''Revue Française d' Automatique Informatique Recherche Opérationnelle.'' 9 (1975), R-2, pp. 39–54. decision problems and structural properties of

Petri net A Petri net, also known as a place/transition (PT) net, is one of several mathematical modeling languages for the description of distributed systems. It is a class of discrete event dynamic system. A Petri net is a directed bipartite graph that ...

s. He has published conference and journal articles as well as textbooks. His later career was devoted to his brainchild Object Petri Nets and the Nets within Nets paradigm; i.e., the idea of using Petri nets as tokens within Petri nets. During a considerable period of his research career, Rüdiger Valk worked in close collaboration with

Carl Adam Petri Carl Adam Petri (12 July 1926 in Leipzig – 2 July 2010 in Siegburg) was a German mathematician and computer scientist. Life and work Petri created his major scientific contribution, the concept of the Petri net, in 1939 at the age of 13, for ...

, the inventor of Petri nets, who held an honorary professorship at the University of Hamburg. Furthermore, Valk contributed to the debate of how computers affect society, how Informatics should be viewed as a scientific discipline and undertook interdisciplinary research on models of sociology and the derived discipline of socionics as an intersection of sociology and informatics.''Selbstorganisation und Governance in künstlichen und sozialen Systemen.'' (Wirtschaft - Arbeit - Technik, Band 5). Lit-Verlag, Münster/ Hamburg/ London 2009, . (with Rolf v. Lüde, Daniel Moldt, Eds.)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Valk, Rudiger 1945 births Living people German computer scientists 20th-century German mathematicians Theoretical computer scientists Academic staff of the University of Hamburg University of Bonn alumni 21st-century German mathematicians