Mathematician receives Carlsberg Foundation Research Award 2016
Professors Morten Broberg and Tobias Holck Colding received the Carlsberg Foundation Research Prize 2016 for excellent research in international development law and mathematics, respectively.
Tobias Colding with colleagues from the Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Copenhagen
HRH Crown Princess Mary, along with Minister for Higher Education and Science Ulla Tørnæs, presented the winners with their awards at a banquet in the New Carlsberg Glyptotek Sunday 25 September. The award includes 1 million DKK, of which 750,000 kr. is for research activities, while 250,000 DKK is a personal gift of honour.
Professor Tobias Holck Colding receives the award for ground-breaking research in differential geometry and geometric analysis.
Colding was born in Copenhagen in 1963 and was awarded the Ph.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992. He became a full professor at New York University as early as 1999, and since 2005 he has been a professor of mathematics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; since 2006 also adjunct professor at the Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, where he is staying around four months a year.
Differential geometry
Tobias Holck Colding belongs to the international elite in mathematics and is presently one of the most influential mathematicians. He works within one of the most active and interesting research fields in mathematics: differential geometry and geometric analysis that is concerned with the interplay between geometry and differential equations.
The interest in this area has exploded in the last 5-10 years and has resulted in one of the really great breakthroughs in mathematics: the solution of the Pointcaré Conjecture - the first of the 7 so-called millenium problems to have been solved. The solution is due to the Russian mathematician G. Perelman, but Tobias Holck Colding has played a highly active role in the solution of the problem. On one hand, some of Coldings early works were focused on understanding geometric concepts that later were important ingredients in Perelman’s work. On the other hand, a decisive part of the proof of the Pointcaré Conjecture was solved by Colding and W. Minicozzi independently of Perelman.
Colding has solved several significant mathematical problems and has published more than fifty papers in leading mathematics journals. He is editor of numerous prominent mathematics journals. Specifically, he has for years been editor of the Annals of Mathematics and is now editor of Acta Mathematica. These journals are among the 3-5 most prestigious of all mathematical journals.