WS1617

Michael Forger holds a chair in Applied Mathematics at the Instituto de Matemática e Estatística of the Universidade de São Paulo in São Paulo, Brazil.

His areas of research are Mathematical Physics (Classical and Quantum Field Theory) and Biomathematics (Mathematical Models for Processes in Genetics), which requires applying methods from many different areas of Pure Mathematics and often developing new ones. Apart from a book on "Elementary Field Theory" (with H. Römer, in German), he has published almost 50 research articles and supervised more than 10 PhD theses. Present research focusses on the further development of the covariant hamiltonian formalism for classical field theory and related questions from global analysis.

He obtained his PhD in 1980 from the Freie Universität Berlin with a thesis on "Differential Geometric Methods in Nonlinear Sigma Models and Gauge Theories" and worked from 1980 to 1992 at the Universität Freiburg, first as an assistant professor and, after his Habilitation in 1986, as an associate professor. Between 1984 and 1986, he went on leave to work as a research fellow at CERN. In 1992, he moved to Brazil to assume his present position.

During the winter semester 2016/17, Prof. Forger will offer a graduate course on "Geometric Methods in Field Theory - Covariant Hamiltonian Formalism" - either in German or in English, depending on the public. (See www.mathinfo.uni-wuerzburg.de/vv1617.html)

Prerequisites for a good understanding are the contents of a first course on differential geometry (calculus on manifolds), as taught in the regularly offered course with the same title (M=ADGM), and some basic concepts from the theory of fiber bundles and from symplectic geometry, which will however be reviewed to the extent necessary.