The board of directors of the University of Lorraine has just decided to award an honorary doctorate to the complex geometer Thomas Peternell, from the Institute of Mathematics of the University of Bayreuth for the year 2021. The ceremony will take place the 12th october and should be accompanied by one or two scientific days.
Scientific contributions
Thomas Peternell is one of the leading experts in complex geometry, a field with deep connections to arithmetic, algebra, differential geometry, topology, and differential and partial differential equations. Many of his works are major advances in this field, which has undergone since the end of the 1970s a real revolution in its results, methods and perspectives. In particular, Thomas Peternell is interested in the structure and classification of complex varieties, problems which he addresses with a very broad spectrum of ideas and techniques.
It is not possible to give a brief and non-technical account of the multiplicity of problems he has studied in some 140 articles, often written in collaboration with some forty experts from fifteen countries, and in two monographs.
He is also the editor of the journal “Documenta Mathematica” and was from 2001 to 2013 the editor of “Manuscripta Mathematica”, as well as of five conference proceedings that he organized jointly with other specialists.
Development of complex geometry in Bayreuth
As a professor at the University of Bayreuth since 1985, he has made the Department of Mathematics of this young university, founded in 1975, an international center for algebraic geometry, where he has trained numerous thesis students. Practically all world experts in complex algebraic geometry have visited Bayreuth to collaborate or interact with Thomas Peternell. He served as Dean of the Department of Physics, Mathematics, and Computer Science 2011 to 2013, and as a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of this university from 2013 to 2015.
Science policy: DFG and Oberwolfach
He is a member of the evaluation committee for research projects submitted to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German analogue of the CNRS) since 2012 at the federal level, and has been responsible for various research projects funded by the DFG since 1997.
He plays an important role in the operation of the mathematical research center in Oberwolfach. Located in the Black Forest, this center has been organizing prestigious weekly international colloquia since at least 1959, and was the model for its French version, the CIRM in Luminy, near Marseille. Thomas Peternell is the treasurer of the non-profit association “Les amis d’Oberwolfach” which gathers several hundred mathematicians. He is also treasurer and member of the board of the “Oberwolfach Foundation”, composed of eminent mathematicians and important members of the German economy. The purpose of this foundation is to raise funds for the costly operation and development of the center, supplementing the funding provided by the state of Baden-Württemberg. Between 1996 and 2012, he also took over from R. Remmert and H. Grauert the organization of the famous bi-annual meeting “Komplexe Analysis” in this center. jointly with K. Hulek and JP. Demailly.
Relations with Nancy
The history of Thomas Peternell’s links with the complex geometry team of Nancy is long, rich and continuous since the 1980s. Just after his thesis, Thomas Peternell participated in 1982 in the first bi-annual conference
He participated in the first bi-annual conference “Journées complexes de Nancy” (now called “Journées complexes lorraines”) in 1982, and was invited to speak at the conference on several occasions. He made more than ten visits to our laboratory, and the visits of the team members to Bayreuth are innumerable! During these visits the exchanges and interactions have multiplied. Thomas Peternell has indeed written papers with several members of the team, including Daniel Barlet, Frédéric Campana (more than twenty works in common), Mihai Păun and Matei Toma (who, by the way, did his thesis in the complex geometry team of Bayreuth!).
Frédéric Campana and Thomas Peternell are also famous for a conjecture, bearing their names, which they formulated in 1991.
A paper with Mihai Păun is one of the most influential in the field in recent years.
Note further that our former colleague Mihai Păun, professor of mathematics in Nancy from 2005 to 2012, was recruited as a professor in Bayreuth two years ago.
The newcomer to the team Ya Deng (CR at IECL since the beginning of 2021) has recently solved a conjecture due to Demailly, Peternell and Schneider. Finally, the team has just spent a whole semester studying, in a working group, Peternell’s latest papers leading to a major breakthrough in the field, namely the singular version of the Beauville-Bogomolov decomposition, a research direction in which Gianluca Pacienza is actively working.
As we have just seen, Thomas Peternell’s results have had a profound impact on complex geometry and his work and the exchanges with him have not ceased to inspire the geometers of the IECL for more than 30 years. We can only rejoice at this beautiful reward!