Günter M. Ziegler

Günter M. Ziegler is a German mathematician, born in May 1963, who has been president of the Free University of Berlin since 2018. He is known for research in discrete mathematics and geometry, and above all for work on the combinatorics of polytopes. He studied at the University of Munich from 1981 to 1984 and took his doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1987 under the supervision of Anders Björner, then habilitated at the Technical University of Berlin in 1992 and became a professor there in 1995 before moving to the Free University. His books include Lectures on Polytopes and, with Martin Aigner, Proofs from THE BOOK. Honours include the Gerhard Hess Prize in 1994, the Leibniz Prize in 2001, the Chauvenet Prize in 2006 with Florian Pfender for their paper on kissing numbers, and the Leroy P. Steele Prize for Mathematical Exposition in 2018. He served as president of the German Mathematical Society from 2006 for a two-year term.