Ulrike Tillmann is a mathematician who has worked in topology, K-theory, and non-commutative geometry. Her well-known work on moduli spaces has been motivated by problems in quantum physics and string theory, while some of her recent work in applied topology addresses challenges in data science.
Born in Germany, Tillmann attended her local grammar school. With the help of a Wien Scholarship she studied at Brandeis University and later received her PhD from Stanford University. Following a post-doctoral position in Cambridge she spent most of her career in Oxford and Merton College. Currently she is the Rothschild & Sons Professor in Cambridge, Director of the Isaac Newton Institute, President of the London Mathematical Society (LMS), and Vice-President of the International Mathematical Union (IMU).
For her outstanding research Tillmann was awarded the Whitehead Prize by the LMS in 2004, the Bessel–Humboldt Forschungs Preis in 2008, elected an inaugural Fellow of the American Mathematical Society in 2012 and a Member of the Leopoldina in 2017. She has been a Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute since its establishment in 2015, and currently she serves on scientific boards of several international institutions, including the Austrian Science Foundation (FWF).
A former member of Council of the Royal Society 2017-20 during which time she also served as interim Vice-President, she has chaired the Royal Society's Education Committee since 2020.
Subject groups
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Mathematics
Applied mathematics and theoretical physics, Pure mathematics