Episode 1 — That’s how we started

The official decision to found a “Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences” was made as early as 1995 on the suggestion of Bert-Wolfgang Schulze, head of the MPG working group “Partial Differential Equations and Complex Analysis” at the University of Potsdam. It was prepared by a founding commission headed by the great mathematician Friedrich Hirzebruch, the long-time director of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn.

On November 17, 1995 Jürgen Jost, Stefan Müller and Eberhard Zeidler were appointed Scientific Members of the Max Planck Society and directors of the new mathematical MPI. Jürgen Moser from ETH Zurich contributed to the establishment of our institute as an External Scientific Member.

On March 1, 1996, the first research group “Methods of Mathematical Physics” was launched, led by Professor Eberhard Zeidler, who also served as the first executive director of our institute. On August 1, Professor Jürgen Jost followed him with his group on “Geometric Methods, Complex Systems”, and on October 1 the group “Analytical Methods, Mathematical Aspects of Material Sciences” headed by Professor Stefan Müller was launched.

Experience a few official as well as personal impressions from our first days in the following video.