Martin Grötschel, born in 1948, studied mathematics at U Bochum (1969-1973), received his PhD in economics (1977) and his habilitation in Operations Research (1981) at U Bonn. He was professor of applied mathematics at U Augsburg 1982-1991, professor of information technology at TU Berlin and vice president/president of the Zuse Institute for Information Technology Berlin (ZIB) 1991-2015. Grötschel was the President of the German Mathematical Society (DMV) 1993-1994, Secretary General of the International Mathematical Union (IMU) 2007-2014, President of the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW) 2015-2020 and chaired the DFG Research Center MATHEON “Mathematics for Key Technologies” 2002-2008. He has held numerous further science administration and advisory positions. Grötschel’s main areas of research are discrete mathematics, optimization, and operations research. He has made, e.g., contributions to polyhedral combinatorics and to the development of methods proving the polynomial time solvability of optimization problems. He has also focused on the design of practically efficient algorithms for hard combinatorial optimization problems appearing in practice, such as the travelling salesman, the max-cut, the linear ordering, and various connectivity problems. Cutting plane algorithms for integer programming are among his favorites. The application areas include telecommunications, chip design, energy, production planning and control, logistics, and public transport. He has been an open access and open science activist and is currently involved in fostering digital humanities. Grötschel’s scientific achievements were honored with several distinctions including the Cantor Medal, the Leibniz, the Beckurts, the Dantzig, the Fulkerson, and the John von Neumann Theory Prize. He holds four honorary degrees and is a member of seven scientific academies, including the US National Academy of Engineering. For more details, see http://www.zib.de groetschel/ Martin Grötschel and his wife Iris enjoy travelling, understanding and appreciating varied cultures, and exploring their history and archaeology.

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