For the first time ever, a married couple won a Leibniz Award for joint scientific research. Professors Hélène Esnault and Eckart Viehweg worked together for more than 20 years and during that time wrote approximately 25 substantial publications together. Their main scientific project was a joint effort for which they both were awarded the Leibniz Prize. Professor Esnault and Professor Viehweg achieved key results in the field of algebraic geometry, which focuses on solution sets for equations; more precisely, the zero sets of polynomials. The simplest examples of these are curves (such as circles or lines) and surfaces (such as the surface of the earth) that appear everywhere in nature. Professor Esnault and Professor Viehweg classified these objects according to their properties, a highly-demanding mathematical problem. Their work achieved such success because it generalizes traditional methods in a highly abstract way without losing sight of important applications to classic problems in differential equations and number theory. Professor Esnault, born in Paris, studied mathematics there and, after receiving the Heisenberg Scholarship of the German Research Foundation at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn in 1990, she was granted a C4 professorship at the University of Essen. Professor Viehweg studied in Heidelberg. After a brief assistantship in Mannheim, he received the German Research Foundation’s Heisenberg Scholarship and in 1984 took a C4 professorship at the University of Essen.

Website of the Faculty of Mathematics

Obituary of Professor Eckart Viehweg †