Friedrich Götze (born 6 August 1951 in

Hameln Hameln ( ; ) is a town on the river Weser in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is the capital of the district of Hameln-Pyrmont and has a population of roughly 57,000. Hamelin is best known for the tale of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. History Hameln st ...

) is a German mathematician, specializing in

probability theory Probability theory or probability calculus is the branch of mathematics concerned with probability. Although there are several different probability interpretations, probability theory treats the concept in a rigorous mathematical manner by expre ...

mathematical statistics Mathematical statistics is the application of probability theory and other mathematical concepts to statistics, as opposed to techniques for collecting statistical data. Specific mathematical techniques that are commonly used in statistics inc ...

, and

number theory Number theory is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers and arithmetic functions. Number theorists study prime numbers as well as the properties of mathematical objects constructed from integers (for example ...

Education and career

Götze studied mathematics and physics at the

University of Göttingen The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen (, commonly referred to as Georgia Augusta), is a Public university, public research university in the city of Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany. Founded in 1734 ...

and the

University of Bonn The University of Bonn, officially the Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (), is a public research university in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the () on 18 October 1818 by Frederick Willi ...

by means of a scholarship from the

Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes The German Academic Scholarship Foundation (German: , or ''Studienstiftung'' for short) is Germany's largest and most prestigious scholarship foundation. According to its statutes, it supports "the university education of young people who, on ac ...

. In 1978 he received his doctorate from the

University of Cologne The University of Cologne () is a university in Cologne, Germany. It was established in 1388. It closed in 1798 before being re-established in 1919. It is now one of the largest universities in Germany with around 45,187 students. The Universit ...

with thesis ''Asymptotic Expansions in the Central Limit Theorem in Banach Spaces'' under the supervision of

Johann Pfanzagl Johann Richard Pfanzagl (2 July 1928 – 4 June 2019) was an Austrian mathematician known for his research in mathematical statistics. Life and career Pfanzagl studied from 1946 to 1951 at the University of Vienna and received his doctorate t ...

. At the University of Cologne, Götze was an assistant, interrupted by a year as visiting professor at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

. In 1983 he

habilitated Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in Germany, France, Italy, Poland and some other European and non-English-speaking countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellen ...

in Cologne with thesis ''Asymptotic developments in central limit theorems''. In 1984 he became a professor of mathematics at

Bielefeld University Bielefeld University () is a public university in Bielefeld, Germany. Founded in 1969, it is one of the country's newer universities, and considers itself a "reform" university, following a different style of organization and teaching than the e ...

. For the academic years 1990/91 and 2002/2003 he was Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics.Professor Friedrich Götze Mitgleid der Leopoldina
/ref> Götze is a member of the scientific advisory board of the Weierstrass Institute (of which he is a founding member) and of the board of the Gesellschaft für Mathematische Forschung, which supports and legally represents the

Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach The Oberwolfach Research Institute for Mathematics () is a center for mathematical research in Oberwolfach, Germany. It was founded by mathematician Wilhelm Süss in 1944. It organizes weekly workshops on diverse topics where mathematicians and ...

. He is a Fellow of the

's Institute for Mathematical Stochastics and a member of

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 Europe ...

. He was in 2017/18 the vice-president and was elected for 2019/20 the president of the

Deutsche Mathematiker-Vereinigung The German Mathematical Society (, DMV) is the main professional society of German mathematicians and represents German mathematics within the European Mathematical Society (EMS) and the International Mathematical Union (IMU). It was founded in ...

(DMV).

Research

His research deals with asymptotic methods, convergence rates and limit theorems in mathematical statistics,

Markov process In probability theory and statistics, a Markov chain or Markov process is a stochastic process describing a sequence of possible events in which the probability of each event depends only on the state attained in the previous event. Informally, ...

es, stochastic algorithms, probability theory, functional analysis, and spectral distribution in

random matrices In probability theory and mathematical physics, a random matrix is a matrix-valued random variable—that is, a matrix in which some or all of its entries are sampled randomly from a probability distribution. Random matrix theory (RMT) is the ...

. He applied probabilistic methods to

analytic number theory In mathematics, analytic number theory is a branch of number theory that uses methods from mathematical analysis to solve problems about the integers. It is often said to have begun with Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet's 1837 introduction of Dir ...

and the geometry of numbers, including the problem of distribution and density of lattice points in ellipses. With the introduction of fundamental new methods, he gave a new, effective proof of the

Oppenheim conjecture In Diophantine approximation, a subfield of number theory, the Oppenheim conjecture concerns representations of numbers by real quadratic forms in several variables. It was formulated in 1929 by Alexander Oppenheim and later the conjectured prop ...

, which was first proved by

Grigory Margulis Grigory Aleksandrovich Margulis (, first name often given as Gregory, Grigori or Gregori; born February 24, 1946) is a Russian-American mathematician known for his work on lattices in Lie groups, and the introduction of methods from ergodic the ...

in 1987. Götze was the spokesperson for the DFG Collaborative Research Center's ''Spektrale Strukturen und Topologische Methoden in der Mathematik'' (Spectral Structures and Topological Methods in Mathematics).

Honors and awards

Götze was an Invited Speaker at the

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 IMU Abacus Medal (known before ...

in Berlin in 1988. In 2009 he became a member of the Leopoldina. In 2012 he was the Gauss Lecturer with talk ''Der mehrdimensionale zentrale Grenzwertsatz und die Geometrie der Zahlen'' (The multidimensional central limit theorem and the geometry of numbers). For his contribution to the establishment of the

European Institute for Statistics, Probability, Stochastic Operations Research and its Applications The European Institute for Statistics, Probability, Stochastic Operations Research and its Applications (EURANDOM) is a research institute at the Eindhoven University of Technology The Eindhoven University of Technology (), Abbreviation, abbr. ...

(Eurandom), he was awarded the

Order of Orange-Nassau The Order of Orange-Nassau () is a civil and military Dutch order of chivalry founded on 4 April 1892 by the queen regent, Emma of the Netherlands. The order is a chivalric order open to "everyone who has performed acts of special merits for ...

in 2014.

References

External links

Homepage (with recent online preprints)
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Goetze, Friedrich 1951 births Living people 20th-century German mathematicians 21st-century German mathematicians Probability theorists University of Cologne alumni Academic staff of Bielefeld University Members of Academia Europaea Members of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina People from Hamelin University of Göttingen alumni University of Bonn alumni Presidents of the German Mathematical Society