Professor Gerd Faltings, winner of the prize in science, is the Director at the Max-Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn. He has made groundbreaking contributions to algebraic geometry and number theory. His work combines ingenuity, vision and technical power. He has introduced stunning new tools and techniques which are now constantly used in modern mathematics.
Faltings’ deep insights into the p-adic cohomology of algebraic varieties have been crucial to modern developments in number theory. His work on moduli spaces of abelian varieties has had great influence on arithmetic algebraic geometry. He has introduced new geometric ideas and techniques in the theory of Diophantine approximation, leading to his proof of Lang’s conjecture on rational points of abelian varieties and to a far-reaching generalization of the subspace theorem. Professor Faltings has also made important contributions to the theory of vector bundles on algebraic curves with his proof of the Verlinde formula.