Euler Lecture


The Euler Lecture is a mathematics lecture given at an annual event at the University of Potsdam. The event, initiated in 1993, is organized by the Universität Potsdam, Institut for Mathematik, the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Institut für Mathematik, and the with the assistance of several other organizations, including the Freie Universität Berlin, Fachbereich Mathematik und Informatik, the Technische Universität Berlin, Institut für Mathematic, the Zuse-Institut Berlin, and the Deutsche Mathematiker-Vereinigung. The mathematical lecturer is selected by a distinguished jury. The event also contains a historical lecture and a musical program supporting the event.
The Euler Lecture is named in honor of Leonhard Euler, who spent the years from 1741 to 1766 in Berlin and during that time wrote approximately 380 works. Among other things, Euler worked for many years as director of the mathematics section at the Prussian Academy of Sciences and as a consultant at the court of Frederick the Great in Potsdam.
The Euler Lecture should not be confused with the Ulf von Euler Lecture, an annual lecture sponsored by the Karolinska Institute and named in honor of the Swedish physiologist Ulf von Euler.

Euler Lecture

The organizers of the Euler Lecture maintain an archive of lectures starting in 1993.
YearLecturerLecture Title
2023Avi WigdersonThe Value of Error in Proofs
2022Wolfgang LückA Panorama of L2-Invariants
2021Fernando Codá MarquesMorse Theory for the Area
2019Claire VoisinSome Aspects of Algebraic Geometry
2018Emmanuel CandèsSailing Through Data: Discoveries and Mirages
2017Alfio QuarteroniTaking Mathematics to the Heart
2016Yuri ManinTime between real and imaginary: Big Bang and modular curves
2015Cédric VillaniOf particles, stars, and eternity
2014Martin HairerTaming infinities
2013David EisenbudSyzygies from Cayley to Kontsevich and beyond
2012Simon BrendleDer Satz von Alexandrov in gekrümmten Räumen
2011Timothy GowersThe internet and new ways of doing mathematics
2010Wendelin WernerZufall und Stabilität
2009Hendrik W. LenstraModelling finite fields
2008Michael J. HopkinsHow topologists count things
2007Euler und die Analysis
2006Noga AlonGraphs, Euler's theorem, Grothendieck's inequality and Szemerédi's regularity lemma
2005Persi DiaconisFrom order to chaos with a blink of an epsilon: phase transitions and Markov chains
2004Ludwig FaddeevThe Clay Millennium Problem on quantum Yang-Mills theory
2003David MumfordMetrics in the space of "shapes": Computer vision meets Riemannian geometry
2002Michael AtiyahPolyhedra in geometry, physics and chemistry
2001Wolfgang M. SchmidtDiophantische Approximationen, Diophantische Gleichungen und linear rekurrierte Folgen
2000Thomas C. HalesCannonballs and honeycombs: The proof of the Kepler conjecture
1999Don ZagierVon Ramanujans falschen Thetafunktionen zu Quanteninvarianten
1998Ingrid DaubechiesSurfing with wavelets
1997Haïm BrézisSingularities and quantization effects for the Ginzburg-Landau equation
1996László LovászGraphs and their geometric representation
1995Armand BorelZeta function at integers in analysis and topology
1994Roger PenroseThe complex structure of the universe
1993Raoul BottInvariants of manifolds

Historical lecture