Von Kaven Honorary Award Goes to Mathematician Moritz Weber
DFG honours work on quantum groups / Award ceremony to be held in connection with the Gauss Lectureship of the German Mathematical Society on 6 December in Bremen
DFG honours work on quantum groups / Award ceremony to be held in connection with the Gauss Lectureship of the German Mathematical Society on 6 December in Bremen
The 2021 von Kaven Award of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) goes to Professor Dr. Moritz Weber for his achievements in the field of quantum groups and symmetries. Weber has been Heisenberg Professor at Saarland University since March 2021. His work mainly involves fundamental mathematical research at the interface between analysis, algebra and combinatorics. The €10,000 DFG von Kaven Award will be presented on 6 December 2021 in connection with the Gauss Lectureship of the German Mathematical Society (DMV) in Bremen. The laudation is to be given by computer scientist and DFG Vice President Professor Dr. Kerstin Schill via video link. The event will also be live streamed.
Moritz Weber’s research has contributed significantly to the field of compact quantum groups, with links to free probability theory, combinatorics and operator algebras. Weber made a name for himself in particular with his complete classification of the simple quantum groups, which he was able to achieve by describing algebraic, analytical and representation-theoretical properties using combinatorics. Using computer algebra, he also succeeded in providing fresh impetus for the general classification problem of quantum groups. His findings have been applied in quantum information theory as well as in other mathematical fields.
Moritz Weber completed his academic training at the University of Münster, where he was funded under a DFG Research Training Group as well as being involved in two DFG Collaborative Research Centres in the field of mathematics. In 2010, he moved to Saarland University. From there, postdoctoral stays abroad took him to the Fields Institute in Toronto, Canada, the Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Chennai, India, and the University of Glasgow in Scotland. He became a Junior Professor in Saarbrücken in 2015. Here he led a project as part of the CFC/Transregio “Symbolic Tools in Mathematics and their Application” from 2017 to 2020, and he has since successfully acquired further DFG projects. In 2016, Weber received the Saarland state government Higher Education Award for his voluntary commitment in providing mathematics refresher courses for refugees wishing to take a university degree. This also resulted in the creation of an Arabic-German mathematics textbook.
The von Kaven Award generally goes to mathematicians involved in the DFG’s Heisenberg and Emmy Noether programmes in recognition of outstanding achievements. The recipient is selected by the DFG’s mathematics review board. The prize money comes from a foundation established in 2004 by mathematician Herbert von Kaven together with the DFG. Von Kaven was primarily interested in the fundamentals of mathematics, to which he was committed to promoting throughout his life. He died in 2009 at the age of 101.
Further Information
Sign up for the live stream of the von Kaven Award Ceremony on the DMV Gauss Lectureship website:
Media contact:
- DFG Press and Public Relations
Tel. +49 228 885-2109
presse@dfg.d
Specialist contact at the DFG Head Office:
- Dr. Frank Kiefer
Mathematics and Engineering Sciences 2
Tel. +49 228 885-2567
frank.kiefer@dfg.d
For further information on the von Kaven Award 2021, see:
For further information on the Gauss Lectureship of the German Mathematical Society, see: