Gerd Faltings studied mathematics and physics at the University of Münster. In 1978/79 he was a guest student at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Back in Münster, he qualified as a professor in 1981. Afterwards, he was a professor in Wuppertal and moved to Princeton University in New Jersey, USA, as a full professor at the beginning of 1985. From 1994 until his retirement in 2023, Gerd Falting was one of the directors at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn. Gerd Faltings is a member of the academies in Düsseldorf, Göttingen, Berlin and Halle, the European Academy, the Royal Society (London) and the National Academy of Science (Washington). He received the Fields Medal in 1986, the Leibniz Prize in 1996, the von Staudt Prize in 2008, the Heinz Gumin Prize in 2010, the King Faisal International Prize in 2014, the Shaw Prize in 2015, the Georg Cantor Medal in 2017, and many other awards. Gerd Faltings is known for his work in arithmetic geometry. He proved the Tate conjecture for abelian varieties over number fields, the Shafarevich conjecture for abelian varieties over number fields and the Mordell conjecture.
Gerd Faltings elected member of the Order Pour le Mérite Gerd Faltings elected member of the Order Pour le Mérite
Gerd Faltings, Emeritus Director of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn, was elected a member of the Order Pour le Mérite. The Order now has 34 German and 37 foreign members, including 17 Nobel Prize winners. Being elected to the Order Pour le Mérite is one of the highest honors that can be awarded to scientists and artists in Germany. The association of artists and scholars was founded in 1842 by Prussian King Frederick William IV and revived in 1952 by Federal President Theodor Heuss. The Order Pour le Mérite is under the protectorate of the Federal President. It is financed and organized by the Minister of State for Culture and the Media. Two other directors of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics, Friedrich Hirzebruch and Yuri Manin, were already members of the Order.
