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
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.