Gerd Faltings works at the interface between number theory and algebraic geometry. He also specialises in algebraic curves. He first attracted significant attention in 1983, when, at the age of 29, he proved Mordell’s conjecture – a mathematical problem that had remained unsolved for 60 years. In doing so, Faltings demonstrated that on certain algebraic curves, there can be only a finite number of points with rational coordinates. Mordell’s conjecture has since been referred to as Faltings’ theorem. The proof was regarded as groundbreaking and served as the starting point for new methods and conceptual frameworks that significantly shaped research in geometry in the decades that followed. At the same time, Faltings succeeded in transferring methods from complex geometry to arithmetic versions, thereby uniting geometric and arithmetic approaches in mathematics.
Gerd Faltings began his academic career at the University of Münster, where he completed his diploma in mathematics in 1978 and obtained his doctorate in the same year. Following a research stay at Harvard University in the USA, he returned to Münster and qualified as a professor there in 1981. This was followed by professorships at the University of Wuppertal (1982–1984) and at Princeton University in the USA (1984–1994). From 1994 until his retirement in 2023, he was Director of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn and a professor at the University of Bonn. In 2025, Gerd Faltings was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany with Star, and in 2009 the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, First Class. He was honoured with the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation (DFG) in 1996.
The Abel Prize is regarded as the ‘Nobel Prize of Mathematics’ and is endowed with 7.5 million Norwegian kroner, equivalent to approximately 670,000 euros. Gerd Faltings is the first German to receive this prize and one of the few mathematicians to have been awarded the two most prestigious honours in mathematics: the Abel Prize and the Fields Medal, which Faltings received back in 1986 – at that time also as the first German. The Abel Prize is named after the Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel and is funded by the Norwegian government. Faltings will receive the award on 26 May 2026 during a ceremony in Oslo.