László Székelyhidi is appointed director at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences

The new research group will focus on applied mathematics, especially partial differential equations and the calculus of variations. Since their development by Newton and Leibniz, differential equations have been one of the most essential tools of modern mathematics. Partial differential equations describe the relationship between temporal and spatial changes of functions mathematically in a concise way. Thus, almost all fundamental physical laws can be formulated in the language of mathematics. Székelyhidi's research bridges different mathematical subdisciplines by applying methods initially developed for differential geometry to fluid dynamics and nonlinear elasticity. It makes an important contribution to the rational mechanics of vibrations and evolving microstructures.

One research focus is fluid dynamics, particularly turbulent solutions, which can be described by the Navier-Stokes equations. This simple set of equations, describing only the basic Newtonian laws of conservation of mass and momentum, is capable of capturing the very complex dynamics that occur at many different scales in turbulent flows. These equations are part of the class of super-critical equations. If one zooms in on their solution, there is the possibility that energy conservation is no longer observed in theory. Inflation of the solutions, or also the accumulation of energy in ever-smaller regions, until it finally swells into infinity, can therefore take place. In the case of the Navier-Stokes equations, it remains to be proven that uniform solutions without blow-up always exist. This is one of the six still unsolved millennium problems whose solution is endowed with prize money of one million US dollars by the Clay Mathematics Institute. In the video interview below, Professor Székelyhidi explains what he finds fascinating about this problem.

László Székelyhidi was born in 1977 in Debrecen, Hungary. His parents are both mathematicians. When choosing a career, he initially hesitated between his two great passions, music and mathematics. He decided on the latter and studied mathematics at Oxford University. He wrote his dissertation at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences in Leipzig and received his doctorate from the University of Leipzig in 2004, followed by research stays in Princeton, again at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, and at the ETH Zurich. In 2007, he accepted a call to the University of Bonn but returned to Leipzig in 2011. Since then, he has been teaching and conducting research as the Professor of Applied Mathematics at the Mathematical Institute of the University of Leipzig.