Professor Bourguignon has been President of the European Research Council since 2014. During his tenure, the ERC has been a flagship component of Horizon 2020, the EU’s current Research Framework Programme, which has brought the council a corresponding budget increase of 60%.
Bourguignon is a mathematician by profession, whose main area of research is differential geometry. His work has focused on the Ricci curvature and its relation to both differential geometry and general relativity. His co-authored monographs include A Spinorial Approach to Riemannian and Conformal Geometry (EMS, 2015) and Mathematics, a Beautiful Elsewhere (Thames and Hudson, 2012), a book on the intersection of mathematics and art, published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name.
Professor Bourguignon has been affiliated with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) for most of his career, which, in his words, “has given me a great freedom to pursue my research”. Prior to his presidency of the ERC, Bourguignon was director of the international research institute, Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques (IHÉS) until 2013.
During Bourguignon’s directorship, the IHÉS numbered three Fields medallists among their faculty. Concurrently with his time at both the CNRS and IHÉS, Bourguignon was supported in research and professorial positions by École polytechnique.
As president of the Société Mathématique de France (1990-92), Bourguignon was instrumental in shaping the European Mathematical Society, established in 1990, becoming its second president (1995-98). The achievements of his tenure include founding the Journal of the European Mathematical Society (JEMS), increasing the visibility of the EMS, and boosting support for young mathematicians.
Among Bourguignon’s awards are the Prix Paul Langevin (1987) and the Prix du Rayonnement Français in Mathematical Sciences and Physics from the Académie des Sciences de Paris (1997). In addition, he has been granted several honorary positions, including membership of the London Mathematical Society and the German Association of Mathematicians (DMV), and doctorates from Keio University, Japan, and Nankai University, China.
We look forward to welcoming Professor Bourguignon at the 8th European Congress of Mathematics in Portorož, Slovenia!
Further details will be posted on our website, please follow us here for more news.
(Photo: University of Primorska)
Sources
https://erc.europa.eu/erc_member/jean-pierre-bourguignon
https://www.ihes.fr/en/professeur/jean-pierre-bourguignon-2/
https://erc.europa.eu/projects-figures/facts-and-figures
https://euro-math-soc.eu/history-european-mathematical-society