Wendelin Werner, Fields Medal 2006

Wendelin Werner (born 23 September 1968) is a German-born French mathematician working on random processes such as self-avoiding random walks, Brownian motion, Schramm–Loewner evolution, and related theories in probability theory and mathematical physics. In 2006, at the 25th International Congress of Mathematicians in Madrid, Spain he received the Fields Medal "for his contributions to the development of stochastic Loewner evolution, the geometry of two-dimensional Brownian motion, and conformal field theory". He is professor at ETH Zürich.

Biography

Werner was born on 23 September 1968 in Cologne, Germany. His parents moved to France when he was nine months old. In 1977 he became a French national. After a classe préparatoire at Lycée Hoche in Versailles, he studied at École Normale Supérieure from 1987 to 1991. His 1993 doctorate was written at the Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie and supervised by Jean-François Le Gall. Werner was a research officer at the CNRS (National Center of Scientific Research, Centre national de la recherche scientifique) from 1991 to 1997, during which period he held a two-year Leibniz Fellowship, at the University of Cambridge. He has been Professor at the University of Paris-Sud in Orsay from 1997 to 2013 (and has also been lecturing at the École Normale Supérieure from 2005 to 2013).

Awards and honours

• Heinz Gumin Prize (de) (2016)
• Fields Medal (2006)
• Pólya Prize (2006)
• Loève Prize (2005)
• Grand Prix Jacques Herbrand (2003)
• Fermat Prize (2001)
• EMS Prize (2000)
• Davidson Prize (1998)

He became a member of the French Academy of Sciences in 2008. He is also member of other academies of sciences, including the Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and is an honorary fellow of Gonville and Caius College.