Mathematics Atlas

How Proof Is Made
Sign In
Text size
100%
Theme
Mathematician

Jorg Wills

Modern

German mathematician who first posed the lonely runner conjecture in 1967 in purely number-theoretic terms, one of its two independent originators. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Facts
Birth Date
1937-03-05 1
Birth Year
1937 1
Birthplace
Berlin, Germany 1
Nationality / Culture
German 2
Defining Contribution
Posed the lonely runner conjecture in 1967. 2
Notable Work
Posed the Lonely Runner Conjecture in number-theoretic (view-obstruction) form in 1967; pioneered finite sphere packing theory including the sausage conjecture and sausage catastrophe, and a 1993 parametric-density theory unifying finite and infinite sphere packings 1
Award
Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, First Class (1995); honorary doctorate, TU Wien (2003); Golden Badge of Honour, German Mathematical Society (2002) 1
Biography
Gender
Male 1
Jorg Wills
Filter Results1 entry
Connections

Conjectures Posed

Posed the conjecture in 1967 in purely number-theoretic terms.

Source Lonely Runner Conjecture (Wikipedia)

In Branch

Primary research field per the source's own opening sentence: discrete, convex and combinatorial geometry, including finite sphere packings and the sausage conjecture.

Source Joerg Wills (Wikipedia, German)
In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Joerg Wills (Wikipedia, German)
Wikimedia Foundation
  • opening paragraph
    Joerg Michael Wills (born 5 March 1937 in Berlin) is a German mathematician working in discrete, convex and combinatorial geometry.
  • biography section
    Wills earned his doctorate in 1965 under Ernst Max Mohr at TU Berlin. He was a professor at TU Berlin and, from 1974, professor at the University of Siegen, becoming emeritus in 2002. In 1995 he received the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, First Class, and in 2003 became an honorary doctor of TU Vienna; in 2002 he received the Golden Badge of Honour of the German Mathematical Society. His research areas are discrete geometry, geometry of numbers, finite sphere packings (sausage theorems, the sausage catastrophe), and Diophantine approximation (the view-obstruction problem, the lonely runner conjecture).
View the Source
2. Lonely Runner Conjecture (Wikipedia)
WikipediaConjectures Posed: Lonely Runner Conjecture, Opening paragraph
Quote, Conjectures Posed: Lonely Runner Conjecture, Opening paragraph
The conjecture was first posed in 1967 by German mathematician Jorg Wills
View the Source

Take a Related Quiz

Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.