MATH+ Distinguished Fellow Gavril Farkas of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin was elected as a “Member of the Academia Europaea” (the Academy of Europe) in the mathematics section. Congratulations from MATH+!

The Academia Europaea is the Pan-European Academy of Sciences, Humanities, and Letters. Its objective is the “advancement and propagation of excellence in scholarship” through joint activities and events in education and research around the world. Its members are scientists and scholars from a wide range of disciplines nominated yearly by a committee of experts. Formed in 1988, the Academy of Europe has over 50 Nobel Prize winners among its members.

Upon hearing of his election, Farkas commented: “I am very honored to be elected to this prestigious Academy. Speaking as a person with three European citizenships (Hungary, Romania, Germany), I find its spirit viewing Europe as a whole, particularly appealing.”

Gavril Farkas is the Director of the Institute for Mathematics and Professor of Algebraic Geometry at HU, where he also leads the Algebraic Geometry research group. Born in Hungary, he began his career in Romania before doing his PhD in the Netherlands at the University of Amsterdam, where his thesis was on the moduli space of curves. Since then, he has held appointments at the University of Michigan, Princeton University, and the University of Texas Austin. Gavril Farkas finally came to Berlin in 2007. He has been an active member of the Berlin Mathematical School (BMS) since his arrival. In 2019, he joined MATH+ when it was launched as Cluster of Excellence.

The objects of study in Farkas’ field are algebraic varieties, which are abstract generalizations of curves and surfaces. His research focus is on the geometry and topology of various moduli spaces. Still, he is also interested in moduli of curves, enumerative geometry, syzygies of algebraic varieties and commutative algebra aspects, vector bundles on curves, abelian varieties and theta functions, Prym varieties, K3 surfaces, and Brill-Noether type problems.

For more information on Gavril Farkas, visit his personal homepage and learn more about his Academia Europaea membership here.