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December 20, 2006

Excellent Math in Bonn: Opening Colloquium in January

Posted by Urs Schreiber

After decades in which every potential sign of elitism was oficially frowned upon, the last German government had decided that it was quite a pity that every university here was and had to be equal, with none being more equal than the others. They decided it would be lots of fun to have some elite universities, like all those other countries do. So they decided to find them – by decree.

The result is that, as of recently, two Munich universities as well as that in Karlsruhe are officially elite universities™. In addition, a couple of institutes of several other universities, in various fields, have been declared to be clusters of excellence™.

In practice, what this really means is that those places with the new titles will get extra government money from now on. Everybody is excited about that.

Anyway, there is now precisely one “cluster of excellence” concerned with mathematics in Germany, and that’s in Bonn.

Hausdorff Center for Mathematics

As a cluster of excellence, it’s titled

Mathematics: Foundations, Models, Applications.

Luckily, that title is not too restrictive.

I am writing all this because you might be intersted in the cluster’s Opening Colloquium that takes place January 19th and 20th, 2007.

Plenary lectures will be given by

Douglas Arnold (Minneapolis)
Michael Hopkins (Harvard)
Elliott Lieb (Princeton)
László Lovász (Budapest)
Andreu Mas-Colell (Barcelona)
Wendelin Werner (Paris)

So it might be worth a visit.

Posted at December 20, 2006 7:47 PM UTC

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3 Comments & 1 Trackback

Re: Excellent Math in Bonn: Opening Colloquium in January

Well, the German government may not have been willing to acknowledge it, but everybody in mathematics and theoretical physics has known that Bonn has been the best place for mathematics in Germany for a long time.

Posted by: Georg on December 21, 2006 4:44 AM | Permalink | Reply to this

Re: Excellent Math in Bonn: Opening Colloquium in January

everybody in mathematics and theoretical physics has known that Bonn has been the best place for mathematics in Germany for a long time.

Yes, certainly. I hope it is clear that I did not mean to imply anything else.

The mocking tone of the above entry is not aimed at the fact that some places are in fact the best places of their kind, but the way this was being handled by the administration here.

Posted by: urs on December 21, 2006 10:47 AM | Permalink | Reply to this

Re: Excellent Math in Bonn: Opening Colloquium in January

I am a little depressed. I tried to get to that opening colloquium yesterday. But a storm has caused much of the railway system to break down. As a result, I spent the better half of the day sitting in a train which itself spent the better part of the day standing still somewhere between Düsseldorf and Cologne. Oh well.

Posted by: urs on January 20, 2007 11:58 AM | Permalink | Reply to this
Read the post Program Geometry and Physics at HIM
Weblog: The n-Category Café
Excerpt: A program on geometry and physics takes place summer 2008 at the HIM on Bonn.
Tracked: December 11, 2007 6:31 PM

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