Our postdoctoral researcher Elena Demattè was honored with the Hausdorff Memorial Prize for her outstanding doctoral dissertation at the University of Bonn. We extend our warmest congratulations to both awardees! 💐
Hausdorff Memorial Prize awarded to Elena Demattè and Lars Becker As every year, the Department of Mathematics of the University of Bonn awarded the Hausdorff Memorial Prize for the best dissertation in mathematics. This year, the jury decided to award the Hausdorff Memorial Prize for the academic year 2024/2025 twice, honoring Elena Demattè and Lars Becker. Joscha Gedicke, Chairman of the Department of Mathematics, presented the award on January 14. In her dissertation “The mathematical properties of the radiative transfer equation,” supervised by Juan J. L. Velázquez, Elena Demattè (now postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences) examines the so-called radiative transfer equation. This equation is a kinetic model that describes the interaction of photons with matter. It includes phenomena like photon absorption and emission as well as scattering. The equation is of great importance in many fields, including astrophysics and steel production. Elena Demattè's PhD thesis examines this equation in strict mathematical terms. Among other things, it proves the existence of a stationary distribution for the temperature of a body in which the transfer of heat is due to the combination of radiation and scattering. The thesis contains a remarkable number of new results and also opens up interesting classes of problems in the field of partial differential equations, in which new phenomena are to be expected. The dissertation “Estimates for some rough operators with modulation symmetries” by Lars Becker, supervised by Christoph Thiele, contains three original papers, each of which makes a substantial contribution to open problems in harmonic analysis, using new and extremely creative approaches. One of these papers has already been published in a renowned journal. The work contributed significantly to the formalization and generalization of Carleson's theorem on the almost everywhere convergence of Fourier series, a project that has attracted worldwide attention. A blueprint resulting from this work formed the basis for the successful application for an ERC Synergy Grant. This project “Harmonic Analysis with Lean Formalization” (HALF), funded with 6.4 million euros, is led by Christoph Thiele and Floris van Doorn. The Hausdorff Memorial Prize is awarded in honor of Felix Hausdorff every year around the anniversary of his death, January 26, as part of the Hausdorff Colloquium. Professors and private lecturers have the right to nominate candidates. The decision is made by a jury appointed by the Department of Mathematics. The award consists of prize money of 500 euros and a book prize. This year, the prize money was split. Former awardees of the Hausdorff Memorial Prize were for example Eva Viehmann, Angkana Rüland (both received the Leibniz Prize later in their career) and Peter Scholze (who became Fields medalist some years later).