Jürgen Jost

Jürgen Jost (right) 2008 with Yum-Tong Siu and Mina Teicher

Jürgen Jost (born June 9, 1956 in Münster) is a German mathematician. He has been a director of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences in Leipzig since 1996.

Life and work

In 1975, he began studying mathematics, physics, economics and philosophy. In 1980 he received a Ph.D. from the University of Bonn under the supervision of Stefan Hildebrandt.^[1] In 1984 he was at the University of Bonn for the habilitation. After his habilitation, he was at the Ruhr-University Bochum, the chair of Mathematics X, Analysis. During this time he was the coordinator of the project "Stochastic Analysis and systems with infinitely many degrees of freedom" July 1987 to December 1996.

For this work he received the 1993 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.

Since 1996, he has been director and scientific member at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences in Leipzig. After more than 10 years of work in Bochum, this he followed: "tackle new research problems in the border area between mathematics and the natural sciences and simultaneously encourage mathematical research in Germany, particularly in the fields of geometry and analysis."

In 1998 he was an honorary professor at the University of Leipzig. In 2002, there, he initiated with two other scientists from the Max Planck Institute, the Interdisciplinary Center for Bioinformatics (IZBI).

In 1986 he was invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Berkeley (Two dimensional geometric variational problems). He is a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.^[2]

His research focuses are:

• Complex dynamic systems
• Neural networks
• Cognitive structures and theoretical neurobiology, cognitive science, theoretical and mathematical biology
• Riemannian geometry; analysis and geometry
• Calculus of variations and partial differential equations; mathematical physics

Publications

• Harmonic mappings between Riemannian manifolds, ANU press, Canberra, 1983
• Harmonic maps between surfaces, Springer LNM 1062, 1984, ISBN 978-3-540-13339-1, doi:10.1007/BFb0100160
• Nonlinear methods in complex geometry, Birkhäuser, Basel, Boston, series: DMV seminars, vol. 10, 1988; 2Nd Edition 1991
• Two dimensional geometric achieved problem, Wiley-InterScience, Chichester, 1991, ISBN 978-0471928393
• Differential Geometry and Minimal Surfaces, Springer, 1994; 2Nd Edition 2007 (with j-H.) Eschenburg), ISBN 978-3-540-22227-9, doi:10.1007/978-3-540-68293-6
• Riemannian Geometry and Geometric Analysis, Springer, 1995; 6Th Edition 2011, ISBN 978-3-642-21297-0, doi:10.1007/978-3-642-21298-7
• Compact Riemann Surfaces, Springer, 1997. 3. Edition 2006, ISBN 978-3-540-33065-3, doi:10.1007/978-3-540-33067-7
• Postmodern Analysis, Springer, 1905, 3rd Edition 2005, ISBN 978-3-540-25830-8, doi:10.1007/3-540-28890-2
• A mathematical introduction to string theory - achieved problem, geometric and probabilistic methods (with S. Albeverio, S. Paycha S. Scarlatti), London math. Soc., lecture note series 225, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1997, ISBN 978-0521556101
• Calculus of Variations (with x. Li-Jost), Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998, ISBN 978-0521057127
• Nonpositive curvature: geometric and analytic aspects, (lectures in mathematics: ETH Zurich), Birkhäuser-Verlag, Basel, 1997, ISBN 978-3764357368
• Partial Differential Equations, Springer, 1998, ISBN 978-3-540-64222-0, doi:10.1007/978-3-642-58888-4
• Bosonic Strings: A mathematical treatment, AMS international press, 2001
• Partial Differential Equations, Springer, 2002, 3rd Edition in 2013, ISBN 978-1-4614-4808-2, doi:10.1007/978-1-4614-4809-9
• Dynamical Systems. Examples of complex behaviour, Springer, 2005, ISBN 978-3-540-22908-7, doi:10.1007/3-540-28889-9
• Geometry and Physics, Springer, 2009, ISBN 978-3-642-00540-4, doi:10.1007/978-3-642-00541-1

References

External links

• Literature by and about Jürgen Jost in the German National Library catalogue
• Webpage at Max-Planck-Institut
• Website at the Universität Leipzig
• Interview with Jürgen Jost and Dr. Hans-Joachim Freund