New video portrait with mathe­mati­cian Anna Wienhard

Anna Wienhard is one of Germany’s leading mathe­mati­cians. Since 2022, she has headed the Max Planck Insti­tute for Mathe­mat­ics in the Sciences in Leipzig and is a member of the Hector Fellow Academy. A special­ist in differ­en­tial geome­try, she has played a key role in the devel­op­ment of higher Teich­müller theory and contributes signif­i­cantly to modern mathe­mat­ics through her research. A new video portrait by the Hector Fellow Academy offers insights into her scien­tific work and the fasci­nat­ing world of mathematics.

For Wienhard, mathe­mat­ics is far more than just a techni­cal tool – she sees it as an ancient cultural technique and a funda­men­tal basis for modern technolo­gies, includ­ing artifi­cial intel­li­gence. In an increas­ingly technol­ogy-driven world, its societal relevance contin­ues to grow.

Wienhard advocates for a contem­po­rary under­stand­ing of mathe­mat­ics:
“I think we sometimes have a mistaken view of mathe­mat­ics. In school, we often learn: this is how it is, and that’s mathe­mat­ics. And we often imagine mathe­mat­ics as a closed, finished struc­ture. (...) But mathe­mat­ics is actually an incred­i­bly open, unfin­ished, research-driven field – an entity with many differ­ent direc­tions, in which what we know is small compared to what we don’t yet know.”

Solving the many open questions in mathe­mat­ics requires fresh think­ing and creative approaches. Accord­ing to Anna Wienhard, inter­dis­ci­pli­nary collab­o­ra­tion is key – for example, with physics, biology, or computer science. “I believe there is still great poten­tial, especially in bring­ing together theoret­i­cal mathe­mati­cians with scien­tists from other disci­plines.” The goal, she empha­sizes, is not merely to provide mathe­mat­i­cal tools, but to jointly explore which mathe­mat­i­cal concepts could be relevant and applic­a­ble in other fields.

Laura Lankers is a doctoral researcher at the Hector Fellow Academy and has been pursu­ing her doctoral project under Anna Wienhard’s super­vi­sion at the Max Planck Insti­tute for Mathe­mat­ics in the Sciences since 2023. Her fasci­na­tion with mathe­mat­ics began during her school years. In her research project, she combines differ­en­tial geome­try with other mathe­mat­i­cal fields such as algebra and analy­sis. Her goal is to further develop founda­tional concepts and explore their poten­tial appli­ca­tions in machine learn­ing. She sees her member­ship in the Hector Fellow Academy as a great enrich­ment, especially because it allows her to build her own scien­tific network: “I’m very glad to be part of this network and to be able to take advan­tage of the Hector Fellow Academy’s opportunities.”

The video portrait is now avail­able online and invites viewers to discover mathe­mat­ics from a new perspective.