The Order Pour le Mérite is among the highest honors that can be bestowed on scientists and artists in Germany. This assembly of artists and scholars was founded in 1842 by the King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia and re-established by Federal President Theodor Heuss in 1952. The order, whose first chancellor was the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, is under the patronage of the Federal President and is funded and given organizational support by the Minister of State for Culture and the Media.
Gerd Faltings was born in the Buer district of Gelsenkirchen. His father held a degree in physics and his mother one in chemistry. While at school, he twice entered the Stifterverband’s nationwide mathematics competition and was accepted into the German Academic Scholarship Foundation as the German champion. He studied mathematics and physics at the University of Münster after obtaining his Abitur before spending some time as a visiting researcher at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1978 and 1979. Returning to Münster, he was appointed assistant to Professor Hans-Joachim Nastold in 1979 and earned his Habilitation in 1981. He enjoyed great success during his time as a professor in Wuppertal before moving on to Princeton University in New Jersey as a full professor in 1985.
The first few awards to come his way included the 1984 Dannie Heinemann Prize from the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the 1986 Fields Medal in Berkeley, an accolade that the International Mathematical Union only awards every four years at its congress to young mathematicians under the age of 40. With his daughters growing older, he moved back to Germany, where he served as a Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn and the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at the University of Bonn from 1994 until his acceptance of an emeritus position in 2023.
Gerd Faltings is a member of the academies in Düsseldorf, Göttingen, Berlin and Halle as well as the European Academy, the Royal Society in London and the National Academy of Science in Washington. In Germany, he received the Leibniz Prize in 1996, the von Staudt Prize in 2008, the Heinz Gumin Prize in 2010 and the Georg Cantor Medal in 2017. He has also won international recognition, being awarded the King Faisal International Prize in 2014 and the Shaw Prize one year later.
Press release from the Federal Press Office: https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/aktuelles/pressemitteilungen/orden-pour-le-m%C3%A9rite-waehlt-neue-mitglieder-2307696
Press release from the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics: https://www.mpim-bonn.mpg.de/node/13427