Martin Grötschel

Martin Grötschel (born 1948) is a German mathematician known for research on combinatorial optimization, polyhedral combinatorics and operations research. Born in Schwelm, he studied at the University of Bochum, completed a doctorate at the University of Bonn in 1977 under Bernhard Korte and was appointed professor of applied mathematics at the University of Augsburg in 1982, later moving to the Technische Universitt Berlin. His thesis advanced solution methods for the Traveling Salesman Problem, and his joint work with Lszl Lovsz and Alexander Schrijver on the ellipsoid method in combinatorial optimization won the Fulkerson Prize in 1982. He served as vice president and then president of the Zuse Institute Berlin, president of the German Mathematical Society, general secretary of the International Mathematical Union and president of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities.