The European Research Council (ERC) distinguishes excellent researchers by promoting their projects with various grants. Multiple researchers file together an application for the Synergy Grant. Their different perspectives and unconventional approaches shall lead to a substantial breakthrough in pushing back the borders of human knowledge. The mathematicians Prof. Dr. Daniel Huybrechts, as coordinator, from the University of Bonn, Prof. Olivier Debarre from the Université Paris-Diderot, Prof. Emanuele Macri from the Université Paris-Sud and Prof. Claire Voisin from the Collège de France succeeded together in receiving such an ERC Synergy Grant.
Mathematical “Summit Attempt”
In the next six years the researchers want to use the funding of 8.5 million euro to crack unsolved problems in the area of algebraic geometry. “Our project addresses the so called Hyperkähler manifolds and tests some of the most fundamental conjectures of modern mathematics on them” says Huybrechts from the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics of the University of Bonn. These geometric objects generalise especially interesting surfaces, which in honour of three mathematicians are called “K3”. At the same time the name alludes to the K2 in Himalaya, which has been chosen as logo for the project.
All team members research in the area of algebraic geometry, one branch of pure mathematics. “We will now together approach these central questions with our different methods” says Huybrechts. This strategy broadens the perspective on these complex mathematical problems, which are to be solved in the following years.
Daniel Huybrechts, born 1966 in Berlin, studied mathematics at the Humboldt-University in Berlin and at the Max-Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn. He spent years as a postdoc in Princeton and Paris. After his habilitation in Essen, he worked as professor at the University of Cologne and at the Institut de Mathématiques de Jussieu in Paris. Since 2005 he is a professor at the University of Bonn.
Contact for the media:
Prof. Dr. Daniel Huybrechts
Hausdorff Center for Mathematics of the University of Bonn
Tel. 0228/733135
E-Mail: huybrech@math.uni-bonn.de
