When Franca Hoffmann is working in Villa Maria, where the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics (HCM) Cluster of Excellence is based, she immerses herself in a world of formulae. Pretty standard fare for a mathematician, you might say. What is unusual, however, is the sheer range covered by the formulae that gradually appear on the big green blackboard in her office in the old building. She is trying to paint as comprehensive a picture as possible of her fields of research. Since any layperson will have given up trying to grasp the content some time ago, it is good that Franca Hoffmann is there to guide the way through the jungle: “In the top right-hand corner there’s my doctorate, summarized in a single equation.” Put simply, it’s a particular partial differential equation that makes it possible to calculate how particles interact with one another. However, many more of her research interests are also scattered across the blackboard – a foray into discrete mathematics is followed by work that combines applied mathematics with data analysis or that introduces new mathematical approaches to machine learning.
Franca Hoffmann has been a professor at the HCM since September last year and is one of six Bonn Junior Fellows there. What makes her unique, however, is the fact that she spends her spare time expanding research structures in Africa and is currently coordinating efforts to create a doctoral school in data science at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Rwanda. The 30-year-old’s world is not just filled with formulae: it is also fabulous, in the truest sense of the word. Her career to date has been shaped by fortuitous events that ultimately led it to take some unusual turns.
It was an email that had landed in her inbox rather by chance that paved the way for numerous partnerships with other disciplines during her doctorate at Imperial College London. An engineer had already spent several months trying to find help for a mathematical problem about developing battery cells. However, he was having problems getting in touch with the department, which he did not know anything about, so he eventually began to write to mathematicians more or less at random. Hoffmann met with him and listened to what he had to say. “It soon turned out that the solution wasn’t that difficult at all, so I helped him to turn his problem into an equation,” she recounts.
It was not long before the young mathematician was helping out other departments in her new role of “fixer.” More and more emails with questions came flooding in, and she made use of her Facebook friendships to find colleagues from a range of different disciplines. “I realized that I enjoy bringing people together whose paths would otherwise never have crossed,” she says. “At the same time, I got to know many other disciplines myself and set up collaborations.”
But that took up time. As she was still busy with her doctorate, she ultimately approached the central administration at her university – who found her idea so persuasive that she was given funding to set up a professional helpdesk.
Building bridges between cultures
It is also likely to have been openness and a positive attitude that, in a completely different situation, led Franca Hoffmann to reply to what looked like a spam request on her Facebook account – a decision that was to change her life.
Let us rewind a bit. In her early days of studying in London, it so happened that she had made it onto the Imperial College website, where she was telling prospective students about everyday life at uni. At the same time, a Ghanaian NGO was looking for like-minded individuals in Europe who could help young people at math camps. The organizers came across Hoffmann on the university’s website and wrote to her. “Hey, would you like to teach some maths in Ghana?” A brief email exchange and a few months later, the then 21-year-old was sat on the plane on the way to her first visit to Ghana.
“This trip changed everything for me. I realized that my idea of the world wasn’t the slightest bit representative,” she says. Working in Africa has been a firm fixture of her life ever since. She regularly travels to various African countries and sets up math camps, mainly in collaboration with the Kenya-based African Mathematics Initiative. “For example, we want to teach schoolchildren a new self-confidence and make learning fun for them, regardless of how good at math they are. Most of them give up too soon,” Franca Hoffmann says with conviction. She grabs her latest project from her desk: a card game that you can use to improve your math skills.
Embracing change
Hoffmann, who was born in Cologne, has already lived 11 years of her life abroad, rarely spending more than a year or two in the same place. She looks round her new office, which still contains some unpacked boxes from the California Institute of Technology in the US, where she worked most recently. Her room at the University of Bonn now has the potential to become something of an anchor point for her. A Biedermeier-era table from the 19th century, matching chairs and a little sewing table in a corner reveal that Hoffmann also has a traditional side to her personality. “The furniture belonged to my grandparents and has been in our family for over 150 years. I used to do my math homework at this table.”
How did mathematics come to be the common thread in her life?
“There’s a lot you can do with mathematics. To be able to express complicated things in a simple formula is one of the inner beauties of the world,” she says.
She is convinced: “Armed with my research, I can achieve things that I wouldn’t have managed without it. At the same time, it’s great if you can contribute just a little bit to advancing human knowledge.” Good reason, therefore, to be excited about the next few chapters in the fabulous and formula-filled life of Franca Hoffmann.
Photos: Volker Lannert
