Jürgen Jost (born 9 June 1956) 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 ...

specializing in geometry. He has been a director of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences in

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...

since 1996.

Life and work

In 1975, he began studying mathematics, physics, economics and philosophy. In 1980 he received a

Dr. rer. nat. ''Doctor rerum naturalium'' ( for, , Latin, doctor of natural sciences, lit. 'doctor of the things of nature'), abbreviated Dr. rer. nat., is a doctoral academic degree awarded by universities in some European countries (e.g. Germany, Austria and ...

from 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 ...

under the supervision of

Stefan Hildebrandt Stefan may refer to: * Stefan (given name) * Stefan (surname) * Ștefan, a Romanian given name and a surname * Štefan, a Slavic given name and surname * Stefan (footballer) (born 1988), Brazilian footballer * Stefan Heym, pseudonym of German writ ...

. In 1984 he was at the University of Bonn for the habilitation. After his habilitation, he was at the

Ruhr University 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 ...

, the chair of Mathematics X, Analysis. During this time he was the coordinator of the project "Stochastic Analysis and systems with infinitely many degrees of freedom" July 1987 to December 1996. For this work he received the 1993

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 ...

, awarded by 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 ...

. Since 1996, he has been director and scientific member at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences in Leipzig. After more than 10 years of work in Bochum, this he followed: "tackle new research problems in the border area between mathematics and the natural sciences and simultaneously encourage mathematical research in Germany, particularly in the fields of geometry and analysis." In 1998 he was an honorary professor at the

University of Leipzig Leipzig University (german: Universität Leipzig), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 Decemb ...

. In 2002, there, he initiated with two other scientists from the Max Planck Institute, the Interdisciplinary Center for Bioinformatics (IZBI). In 1986 he was

invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians This is a list of International Congresses of Mathematicians Plenary and Invited Speakers. Being invited to talk at an International Congress of Mathematicians has been called "the equivalent, in this community, of an induction to a hall of fame." ...

in Berkeley (''Two dimensional geometric variational problems''). He is a fellow 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 ...

.List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society
retrieved 2013-11-23. His research focuses are: * Complex dynamical systems *

Neural network A neural network is a network or neural circuit, circuit of biological neurons, or, in a modern sense, an artificial neural network, composed of artificial neurons or nodes. Thus, a neural network is either a biological neural network, made up ...

s *

Cognitive structure Cognition refers to "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of Intellect, intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attentio ...

s and theoretical neurobiology, cognitive science, theoretical and

mathematical biology Mathematical and theoretical biology, or biomathematics, is a branch of biology which employs theoretical analysis, mathematical models and abstractions of the living organisms to investigate the principles that govern the structure, development a ...

Riemannian geometry Riemannian geometry is the branch of differential geometry that studies Riemannian manifolds, smooth manifolds with a ''Riemannian metric'', i.e. with an inner product on the tangent space at each point that varies smoothly from point to po ...

; analysis and geometry *

Calculus of variation The calculus of variations (or Variational Calculus) is a field of mathematical analysis that uses variations, which are small changes in functions and functionals, to find maxima and minima of functionals: mappings from a set of functions ...

s and

partial differential equation In mathematics, a partial differential equation (PDE) is an equation which imposes relations between the various partial derivatives of a multivariable function. The function is often thought of as an "unknown" to be solved for, similarly to ...

mathematical physics Mathematical physics refers to the development of mathematics, mathematical methods for application to problems in physics. The ''Journal of Mathematical Physics'' defines the field as "the application of mathematics to problems in physics and t ...

Bibliography

* * * * * * * * * * * * *''Bosonic Strings: A mathematical treatment,'' AMS international press, 2001 * * * *

References

External links

Webpage at Max-Planck-Institut

{{DEFAULTSORT:Jost, Jurgen 20th-century German mathematicians Fellows of the American Mathematical Society Mathematical analysts Variational analysts Living people 1956 births University of Bonn alumni Academic staff of Ruhr University Bochum 21st-century German mathematicians Max Planck Institutes researchers Max Planck Institute directors