Leopoldina elects Catharina Stoppel as member

Bonn, 13.03.19. The National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina welcomes new Academy members next week, including HCM member Catharina Stoppel.

Catharina Stroppel has been a professor of mathematics at the University of Bonn and member of the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics since 2008. Her research focus is representation theory with applications and connections to topology and algebraic geometry. The modern tool of categorification hereby plays an important role. Representation theory describes abstract algebraic or geometric structures by representing their elements as linear transformations of vector spaces, and then studies categories of modules over these abstract algebraic structures. It arose as an algebraic tool to describe generalizations of group actions on spaces. Representation theory appears in almost all areas of mathematics, in particular in group theory, algebra, number theory, topology, and analysis. It is also used as a standard tool in theoretical physics.

Founded in 1652, the Leopoldina is one of the oldest academies of science in the world. With some 1,500 members, the Leopoldina brings together outstanding scientists from Germany, Austria, Switzerland and many other countries. The Leopoldina was appointed as the German National Academy of Sciences in 2008. In this capacity, it represents the German scientific community in international committees and speaks out on social and political questions, providing a nonpartisan, factual framework for discussion.