Willi Jäger (born 15 August 1940 in Kschellowitz,

Bohemia Bohemia ( ; ; ) is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech Republic. In a narrow, geographic sense, it roughly encompasses the territories of present-day Czechia that fall within the Elbe River's drainage basin, but historic ...

) is a German mathematician.

Education

He completed his PhD in 1966 the

University of Munich The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich, LMU or LMU Munich; ) is a public university, public research university in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. Originally established as the University of Ingolstadt in 1472 by Duke ...

under the direction of Erhard Heinz.

Career

From 1969 to 1970 Jäger was a visiting scientist at the

Courant Institute The Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences (commonly known as Courant or CIMS) is the mathematics research school of New York University (NYU). Founded in 1935, it is named after Richard Courant, one of the founders of the Courant Institute ...

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

. In 1970 he became professor of mathematics at the

University of Münster The University of Münster (, until 2023 , WWU) is a public research university located in the city of Münster, North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. With more than 43,000 students and over 120 fields of study in 15 departments, it is Germany's ...

and from 1974 he became professor of applied mathematics at the

Heidelberg University Heidelberg University, officially the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg (; ), is a public research university in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Founded in 1386 on instruction of Pope Urban VI, Heidelberg is Germany's oldest unive ...

. In 1987 Jäger was founding member of the

Interdisciplinary Center for Scientific Computing 200px, South west view of the IWR building, located at Heidelberg's New Campus (until March 2016) The Interdisciplinary Center for Scientific Computing (short IWR) is a scientific research institute of the Heidelberg University, Germany. It centr ...

Heidelberg Heidelberg (; ; ) is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, fifth-largest city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, and with a population of about 163,000, of which roughly a quarter consists of studen ...

. He is a board member of the

Mathematical Research Institute of 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 ...

. In addition to problems of scientific computing, including the effective use of computers for the mathematical modeling of complicated, mostly scientific problems, Jäger deals with problems of nonlinear differential equations,

calculus of variations The calculus of variations (or variational calculus) is a field of mathematical analysis that uses variations, which are small changes in Function (mathematics), functions and functional (mathematics), functionals, to find maxima and minima of f ...

branching process In probability theory, a branching process is a type of mathematical object known as a stochastic process, which consists of collections of random variables indexed by some set, usually natural or non-negative real numbers. The original purpose of ...

es, and the

spectral theory In mathematics, spectral theory is an inclusive term for theories extending the eigenvector and eigenvalue theory of a single square matrix to a much broader theory of the structure of operator (mathematics), operators in a variety of mathematical ...

differential operator In mathematics, a differential operator is an operator defined as a function of the differentiation operator. It is helpful, as a matter of notation first, to consider differentiation as an abstract operation that accepts a function and retur ...

s, mostly with a view to specific applications such as

data visualization Data and information visualization (data viz/vis or info viz/vis) is the practice of designing and creating Graphics, graphic or visual Representation (arts), representations of a large amount of complex quantitative and qualitative data and i ...

. Jäger had more than 100 PhD students, including

Florin Diacu Florin Nicolae Diacu (; April 24, 1959 – February 13, 2018) was a Romanian Canadian mathematician and author. Education and career He graduated with a Diploma in Mathematics from the University of Bucharest in 1983. Between 1983 and 1988 he w ...

, Bernold Fiedler, Stephan Luckhaus,

Hubert Mara Hubert Mara is an Austrian Computer Scientist who specializes in Archaeoinformatics and the application of methods from computer science to the humanities, and thus a combination of these fields. Education and career Hubert Mara graduated (ma ...

and

Martin Vingron Martin Vingron (born October 5 1961) is an Austrian mathematician working in the fields of bioinformatics and computational biology. Since 2000, he has been Director of the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics. Education Vingron grew up in ...

Awards and honors

Thus far, he has been honoured with 2 honorary doctorates, several prizes and the

Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany The Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (, or , BVO) is the highest state decoration, federal decoration of the Federal Republic of Germany. It may be awarded for any field of endeavor. It was created by the first List of president ...

. He gave a DMV Gauss Lecture in 2007.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Jager, Willi Officers Crosses of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany 20th-century German mathematicians 21st-century German mathematicians 1940 births Living people People from Plzeň-North District Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich alumni Academic staff of the University of Münster Academic staff of Heidelberg University