Hausdorff Center for Mathematics

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Hausdorff Center for Mathematics

The Hausdorff Center for Mathematics is a Cluster of Excellence at the University of Bonn. Also on Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube!

The Hausdorff Center for Mathematics is a Cluster of Excellence that was established in 2006 at the University of Bonn under the title "Mathematics: Foundations, Models, Applications" within the Excellence Initiative by the German federal and state governments. It has been successfully renewed for a second funding period in 2012. Its work thematically comprises a broad spectrum of mathematics as well as mathematical economics: from topics from the classical core areas of mathematics through mathematical modeling and numerical simulation in the natural and social sciences to industrial applications in chip design.

04/10/2026

Today, our team from the HCM cluster office took part in the Cologne Marathon, in the relay competition. We usually perform better in maths rankings 😀, but our team, the "Hausdorff Distance Runners" (not sure how many participants understood this nerdy joke 🙃 ), still managed to finish in the middle of the rankings and we had a lot of fun!

29/09/2026

In preparation for the play “Who Was Bernhard Riemann?” on November 12, a Mathematical Salon about this outstanding mathematician will take place one week earlier:

05.11.2026 ab 19 Uhr
Mathematischer Salon
Valentin Blomer: Riemanns Beitrag zur Zahlentheorie - eine Reise von der Antike bis in die Gegenwart (in German)
Lipschitzsaal, Endenicher Allee 60, Bonn

The musical accompaniment will be provided by a duo consisting of harp (Anke De Gersem) and viola (Colin Jahns) from the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne.

Website with information and registration: https://www.mathematics.uni-bonn.de/de/outreach/oeffentliche-veranstaltungen/veranstaltungen/mathematischer-salon-05-11-26

Abstract:
Prime numbers are the multiplicative building blocks of the natural numbers and were studied as fundamental arithmetic objects as early as Euclid’s time. Even though they are invisible in everyday life, we generally deal with them on a daily basis. Riemann recognized that the systematic use of analytical methods is the key to understanding the distribution of prime numbers. This lecture provides insights into the fascinating mathematics surrounding prime numbers.

29/09/2026

November 12, 2026, starting at 6:00 p.m.
Play: Wer war Bernhard Riemann? (in German)
A co-production by Sand-Production Vienna and the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics at the University of Bonn
Event Hall of the LVR-Landesmuseum Bonn, Colmantstr. 14–16

Website with information, program, and registration: https://www.mathematics.uni-bonn.de/de/outreach/oeffentliche-veranstaltungen/veranstaltungen/wer-war-bernhard-riemann

This year, 2026, marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of the great mathematician Bernhard Riemann. In his honor, we have produced, in collaboration with Sand Production, a play about his life and work, which we will premiere in Bonn on November 12, 2026. The evening will be enriched by a lecture from the historian of mathematics David Rowe, who served as a mathematical consultant to the director, Sandra Schüddekopf (Vienna), during the creation of the play. In addition, Valentin Blomer will perform on the piano. Following the play, thanks to the generous support of Walter Purkert — who is known, among other things, for editing the Hausdorff Edition — there will be a culinary reception for all attendees. The entire event is free of charge; registration is required.

The play is aimed at laypeople interested in mathematics, students, and experts alike, but are also very much intended for young people interested in mathematics starting in middle school.

18/09/2026

The Bonn Math Tournament took place today. For the first time, the event was held in the event hall at Deutsche Telekom's headquarters. We are very grateful to them for giving us this opportunity and were extremely impressed by both the atmosphere and the exceptionally friendly and professional service provided by the staff. Sixty-two teams of five high-school students each, coming from all over North Rhine-Westphalia, participated in this year’s tournament. At the top of the rankings were many schools from Bonn and the surrounding area that have been among the top 10 for many years:

🥇1st place: CJD Christophorusschule, Königswinter
🥈2nd place: Beethoven-Gymnasium, Bonn, and Albert-Einstein-Gymnasium, Sankt Augustin
- 4th place: Königin-Luise-Schule, Cologne
- 5th place: Inda-Gymnasium, Aachen
- 6th place: Abtei-Gymnasium, Brauweiler

We would like to send our congratulations to CJD Königswinter on winning the tournament! This year’s theme for the first part of the competition, “Sum of Us,” was “Cryptography and Number Theory.” The students worked through all the problems without any tools — not even calculators were allowed — using both classical and modern methods such as Diffie-Hellman, ElGamal, RSA, and many more. The preparation materials were developed by our colleagues at the University of Hannover. In the second part of the competition — a round consisting of 20 problems to be solved in 60 minutes — an HCM Dream Team, consisting of undergraduate students, graduate students, and postdocs — including many former IMO participants — also took part as a non-competitive player. This team achieved a perfect score — only the second time ever in the history of the tournament! We would like to extend our congratulations to them as well.

In October, we will once again travel to Vienna with the two top-ranked teams for a joint prize trip together with the winning teams from the Netherlands and Belgium. Other prizes included high-quality Casio calculators, Maplesoft licenses, math games, math books, Rubik’s Cubes, and tickets for a guided tour of the Deutsches Museum Bonn and the Arithmeum. Thank you to the tournament’s many supporters! 😍

13/09/2026

About 20 students took part in this year’s Student Week („Schüler*innenwoche“) and had a lot of fun! 🎉☀️This year, we were exploring the mathematics behind John Conway’s “Tangle Dance.” 🪢💃🕺🪢 The three-day workshop was held by Christian Hollmann, PhD student in Mathematics Education. Furthermore, we organized a pub quiz and a visit to the Arithmeum.

In the Tangle Dance, one considers the following situation: Four people stand in a square, arranged so that each pair of dancers facing each other holds one end of a rope. Each person holds onto their end of the rope until the end of the dance. The participants are now allowed to swap places according to specified rules. However, only two operations are permitted: a 90° clockwise rotation (called R) and a specific swap operation (called T) between the two right-hand positions, in which the person on top lifts their rope over the rope of the person on the bottom. By repeating these operations multiple times, various so-called “tangles” could be generated by the participants of the Student Week. No matter how complicated a tangle appeared, it was always be possible to untangle it — simply by continuing to dance and performing only the two permitted operations. During the Student Week, we worked together with the students to uncover the secret of how we can untangle every tangle. But the Tangle Dance offers even more opportunities for mathematical exploration. John Conway discovered an exciting connection between tangles and rational numbers. Each tangle can be assigned a rational number in such a way that two different tangles are assigned two different rational numbers. This connection between topology and algebra motivated us to examine rational numbers more closely and gain some exciting insights into them. Furthermore, using rational numbers, we were able to find an algorithm that always untangles every tangle in the minimum number of necessary operations. We have thus seen that behind this tangle — which at first glance appears very straightforward — lies an entire mathematical world that we explored together with the high-school students. It offered us insights into the mathematical subfields of topology, geometry, arithmetic, and algebra. In addition, we learned about various proof and reasoning techniques, such as the principle of infinite descent, complete induction, and proof by contradiction, and were able to find connections to concepts like the Euclidean algorithm, the Fibonacci numbers, and the golden ratio, which play an important role in mathematics.

02/09/2026

📅 SAVE THE DATE: Mathenacht aus Berlin, Bonn und Münster 2026

💻 Online, kostenlos und ohne Anmeldung!

Am 9. Oktober heißt es wieder: „Mathe mal anders“! ✨

Von 15 bis 24 Uhr erwartet euch ein abwechslungsreiches Online-Programm für Schüler*innen, Lehrende, Studierende und alle, die Spaß an Mathematik haben – oder Mathe einmal anders erleben möchten.

🔢 Interaktive Workshops am Nachmittag für jüngere und ältere Schüler*innen – für Grundschule sowie ab Klasse 5 und ab Klasse 8
🎯 ab 18 Uhr: Mathe-Quiz mit Kahoot!
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💬 ab 19 Uhr: Talkrunde zu „KI und die Rolle der Mathematik in der Zukunft“ – mit Fields-Medaillengewinner Peter Scholze
🎓 ab 20 Uhr: Vorträge mit spannenden und unterhaltsamen Einblicken in aktuelle mathematische Forschung

🗓 Freitag, 9. Oktober 2026 | 15–24 Uhr | online via Zoom

Also: Termin vormerken! Weitere Infos zum Programm folgen. 👀

Die Mathenacht wird gemeinsam von den Mathematik-Exzellenzclustern MATH+ Forschungszentrum der Berliner Mathematik, Hausdorff Center for Mathematics (Bonn) und Mathematics Münster veranstaltet.

Technische Universität Berlin | Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin | Freie Universität Berlin | MINTvernetzt | Mathe im Leben | Mathe im Advent

07/08/2026

Only Moscow performed better: Bonn maths students enjoy great success at the IMC once again

At this year’s International Mathematics Competition for University Students (IMC) in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria—held from July 27 to August 3, 2026—the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn took second place in the unofficial team ranking. The seven-person Bonn team managed to finish ahead of the previously dominant Saint Petersburg State University, though the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology proved even stronger this year, taking first place by a wide margin. In the individual ranking, Lennart Christian Grabbel achieved an outstanding fourth place. All seven participants from Bonn took home medals.

The International Mathematics Competition for University Students has been held annually since 1994. This year, 447 students from 135 universities around the world participated. The University of Bonn team also achieved outstanding results in the individual competition: Lennart Christian Grabbel placed fourth in the ranking and, like Samuel Meyer, won a coveted Grand First Prize. Boldiszàr Mann, Paul Jakob Schmidt, and David Streun were awarded gold medals; Cedric Friedrich received a silver medal; and Birgit Veldi was awarded a bronze medal.

We would like to extend our sincere thanks to Lawk Mineh, a postdoctoral researcher at the Mathematical Institute at the University of Bonn, who served as team captain for the Bonn team, graded the problems, and filed appeals on behalf of the German team regarding the scoring.

Almost every year, the team of math students from Bonn is among the top five teams at the IMC in Blagoevgrad. In recent years, many of its current members have represented Germany at the annual International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) for school students and then decided to study mathematics in Bonn. The Bonn team is supported by the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics (HCM) and by QuantCo. At the HCM, excellent support for young talent at all career levels is of high priority, from early support for children in the Bonn Math Club to the Hausdorff School for doctoral students and postdocs to the Bonn Junior Fellows.

08/07/2026

English version below

Beim Tanz Mathematik neu entdecken
Schüler*innenwoche ermöglicht Jugendlichen drei Tage lang Einblicke in höhere Mathematik

Information and Registration:
https://www.mathematics.uni-bonn.de/de/outreach/oeffentliche-veranstaltungen/veranstaltungen/schuelerinnenwoche-2026

Wir laden Schüler*innen ab der zehnten Klasse ein, spannende Einblicke in die Mathematik und das Mathestudium zu bekommen. Ort ist das Hörsaalzentrum in der Friedrich-Hirzebruch-Allee 5 in Bonn. Die Veranstaltung beginnt nach den Sommerferien am Donnerstag, 10. September, mit einem fünfteiligen Workshop und endet mit einer Rallye über den Campus am Samstag, 12. September. Die Anmeldung ist bis zum 20. August möglich.

Mathematik hat sehr viel mehr zu bieten, als man im Schulunterricht vermuten würde. Ob man ein Mathematikstudium anstrebt oder sich in seiner Freizeit einfach gerne der Mathematik widmet: Die Schüler*innenwoche, die nach den Sommerferien vom 10. bis 12. September stattfindet, macht Spaß und ermöglicht einen spannenden Einblick in die Materie. Für den Donnerstag und Freitag ist eine Befreiung vom regulären Schulunterricht erforderlich, was aber erfahrungsgemäß kein Problem darstellt.

Thema in diesem Jahr ist „John Conways Tangletanz – eine mathematische Brücke zwischen Topologie und Algebra“. Beim Tangletanz stehen vier Personen in einem Quadrat so angeordnet, dass jeweils zwei sich gegenüberstehende Tanzende ein Seil halten. Jede Person wird ihr Seilende bis zum Ende des Tanzes festhalten. Die Teilnehmenden dürfen nun nach vorgegebenen Regeln ihre Plätze tauschen. In diesem interaktiven Workshop werden die Jugendlichen nach und nach sehen, dass sich hinter diesem zunächst sehr übersichtlich wirkenden Tanz eine ganze mathematische Welt verbirgt, die es zu erforschen gilt, mit Einblicken in die mathematischen Teilgebiete der Topologie, Geometrie, Arithmetik und Algebra.

Neben der Vermittlung von fachlichem Wissen beantworten Dozierende und Studierende der Universität Bonn auch Fragen rund um das Studium: Was ist eine Vorlesung, eine Übung oder ein Seminar? Oder was macht man eigentlich im Mathematikstudium? Darüber hinaus gibt es ein Mathematisches Pubquiz, bei dem Teams gegeneinander antreten und die begehrten gelben HCM-Shirts gewinnen können, sowie eine Führung durch das Arithmeum. Bei der abschließenden Rallye über den Poppelsdorfer Campus gibt es die Möglichkeit, die Uni noch auf eine ganz andere Art und Weise kennenzulernen. Die Veranstaltung ist kostenlos, und auch für das leibliche Wohl ist gesorgt. Bis zum 20. August sind noch Anmeldungen möglich.

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Rediscover Math Through Dance
Students' week gives young people a three-day introduction to higher mathematics

We invite high school students in 10th grade and above to gain exciting insights into mathematics and studying math. The event will take place at the Lecture Hall Center at Endenicher Allee 19c in Bonn. The event begins after summer break on Thursday, September 10, with a five-part workshop and concludes with a campus scavenger hunt on Saturday, September 12. Registration is open until August 20.

Mathematics has much more to offer than one might expect from school classes. Whether you’re planning to major in mathematics or simply enjoy spending your free time with math: The "Schüler*innenwoche", which takes place after summer break from September 10 to 12, is fun and provides an exciting glimpse into the subject. Exemption from regular school classes is required for Thursday and Friday, but experience has shown that this is not a problem.

This year’s topic is “John Conway’s Tangletanz—a mathematical bridge between topology and algebra.” In the Tangletanz, four people stand in a square arranged so that two dancers facing each other hold one end of a rope. Each person will hold onto their end of the rope until the end of the dance. The participants may now switch places according to specified rules. In this interactive workshop, the students will gradually discover that behind this dance—which at first glance seems very straightforward—lies an entire mathematical world waiting to be explored, offering insights into the mathematical fields of topology, geometry, arithmetic, and algebra.

In addition to sharing subject-specific knowledge, faculty and students from the University of Bonn will also answer questions about university life: What is a lecture, a tutorial, or a seminar? Or what do you actually do as a math degree student? There will also be a math pub quiz where teams can compete against each other to win the coveted yellow HCM T-shirts, as well as a guided tour of the Arithmeum. The concluding scavenger hunt across the Poppelsdorf campus offers the chance to get to know the university in a whole new way. The event is free, and refreshments will be provided. Registration is open until August 20.

30/06/2026

We are looking to appoint up to four

🔥🔥 W2 Professorships (Bonn Junior Fellows)🔥🔥

to be filled as soon as possible.

These are temporary appointments for a period of five years. Some positions may be endowed with tenure-track, and, in exceptional cases, a position may be tenured immediately.

Deadline: September 27, 2026

The professorships👩‍🏫👨‍🏫
The professorships intend to encourage independent research by outstanding early career researchers. The professorships are endowed with travel and guest funds during the initial period. Bonn Junior Fellows also have access to additional resources of the Hausdorff Center. Bonn Junior Fellows are encouraged to supervise doctoral students.

The candidates 🧔🏾👱‍♀️👩🏿‍🦳👨🏻
We are looking for early career researchers holding a doctoral degree who are developing their own research agenda. Suitable candidates should have already demonstrated scientific independence with relevant publications. Candidates should have some international research experience. They will contribute to our advanced teaching program. German language skills are not required.

MathJobs: https://www.mathjobs.org/jobs/list/28548

More information on the Bonn Junior Fellows positions: https://www.mathematics.uni-bonn.de/hcm/opportunities/bonn-junior-fellows

17/06/2026

Two weeks ago, the Bonn Mathematical Society ("Bonner Mathematische Gesellschaft") organized a fairy-tale evening “Alice and Bob in Wonderland” in the Poppelsdorf Mensa in cooperation with the "Studierendenwerk" and us. During the event, mathematics professor "R. Can-That", lured by a geometry puzzle, fell into the trap of the evil dragon Calculus. To free him, a series of mystical mathematical and moral challenges had to be solved. Together with Alice and Bob, the audience embarked on a fairy-tale journey during which all the virtues of studying mathematics were put to the test, moderated by the storyteller ("Märchenonkel") Thoralf Räsch. In the end, they succeeded in freeing the professor. We had so much fun with the puzzles and riddles, and with all the many wordplays and references. 😀 Thank you so much to all people involved, so many helping hands - fantastic! 🫶

Pictures: Ronny Bittner / BMG

Adresse

Endenicher Allee 62
Bonn
53115

Telefon

+49228733138

Website

http://www.hcm.uni-bonn.de/

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