MATH+ takes this opportunity to wish Jürg Kramer all the best for a happy 65^th birthday! His outstanding commitment to Berlin mathematics and to young mathematicians within MATHEON, the Berlin Mathematical School (BMS), DZLM and MATH+ make him one of our most highly valued members.

Born in Switzerland on 3 June 1956, he started his mathematical career at the University of Basel, where he got his diploma in mathematics with minors in physics and astronomy in 1980 and received his doctorate under Martin Eichler in 1985. Postdoc positions took him to the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn, to Harvard University, the MSRI, Universität Wuppertal, and to ETH Zurich, where he completed his habilitation in 1993. In 1994, he accepted the offer of a professorship at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU Berlin).

After his arrival in Berlin, Jürg Kramer soon took on essential leadership roles. He was deputy director and director of the Institute of Mathematics at HU Berlin from 1998 to 2008. A member of the DFG Research Center Matheon since its founding in 2002, he served on the MATHEON Executive Board from 2007 to 2014. He was also one of the founding fathers of the Berlin Mathematical School (BMS) and has served as chair or co-chair since 2006. In 2013, he was one of the initiators of the Einstein Center for Mathematics ECMath, where he also served on the Executive Board.

From 2013 to 2014, Jürg Kramer served as President of the German Mathematical Society (DMV). He is a member of the European Mathematical Society, the Academia Europea, Acatech, and INNOMATH – a European initiative to support highly gifted high school students.

J. Kramer, E. Sertöz, G. Botero, A. Botero

© BMS/Kay Herschelmann

Throughout his career, Jürg Kramer has been devoted not only to mathematics itself but also to the education and training of mathematics teachers and the advancement of mathematically talented and interested school pupils, students, and teachers – from elementary schools to doctoral researchers. Moreover, his research group aims to make current mathematical developments accessible to the public at large. This commitment is ex­pressed in his engagement in the Berlin network of STEM schools at HU Berlin (Berliner Netzwerk mathematisch naturwissenschaftlicher Schulen) as well as his support for the “Mathematical Kangaroo” (Känguru der Mathematik), the largest international mathematics competition for school children, which is based at the Institute of Mathematics at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

In 2010, a group of experts convened by the Deutsche Telekom Foundation (DTS) proposed a national advanced training center for mathematics as an important building block in its recommendations on Mathematik entlang der Bildungskette (“Mathematics along the educational chain”). As a result, the DTS issued a call for applications providing funding for five years to establish such a center. Based on his project Mathematik anders machen (“Doing Mathematics Differently”) Jürg Kramer organized a consortium of universities, which submitted the winning proposal. Thus, the Deutsches Zentrum für Lehrerbildung Mathematik (DZLM) was founded in October 2011. Jürg Kramer has been the Director of DZLM since the beginning and saw the DZLM find a permanent home as part of a new department Fachbezogener Erkenntnistransfer (“Subject-Specific Transfer of Knowledge”) of the Leibniz Institute for Science and Mathematics Education (IPN) Kiel in 2020. He is now director of the department.

The success story of DZLM would have been impossible without Jürg Kramer’s experience in large collaborative projects like MATHEON, BMS, ECMath, and MATH+, his strong commitment, his excellent networking and communication skills and not least at all his personality and respectful attitude to other people.

In addition to his numerous engagements, Jürg Kramer is also an outstanding researcher, with interests in number theory, automorphic forms, and arithmetic geometry. He chaired two DFG Research Training Groups Arithmetic and Geometry (2004-2009) and Moduli and Automorphic Forms (2012-2016). Anna von Pippich elaborates on Jürg Kramer’s research.

J. Kramer, M. Joswig, A. von Pippich / © BMS/Kay Herschelmann

Last but not least, Jürg Kramer is a key member of the Berlin Mathematics Research Center MATH+ and contributed an important part to the successful application for MATH+ in the framework of the German Excellence Strategy. With all his energy and commitments, Jürg Kramer has significantly contributed to the shape of the mathematical landscape in Berlin and has helped to make it an internationally attractive destination for study and research. Due to his efforts, there are many mathematicians around the world who owe their education to Berlin mathematics!

Dear Jürg, MATH+ wishes you a happy birthday and we look forward to working together on many more activities!

Anna von Pippich on Jürg Kramer’s Research

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