Matilde Marcolli


Matilde Marcolli is an Italian mathematical physicist. She has conducted research work in areas of mathematics and theoretical physics; obtained the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz-Preis of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, and the Sofia Kovalevskaya Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Marcolli has authored and edited numerous books in the field. She is currently a professor in the mathematics department of the University of Toronto and a member of the Perimeter Institute.

Career

Marcolli obtained her Laurea in Physics in 1993 summa cum laude from the University of Milan under the supervision of Renzo Piccinini, with a thesis on Classes of self equivalences of fibre bundles. She moved to the USA in 1994, where she obtained a master's degree and a PhD in Mathematics from the University of Chicago, under the supervision of Melvin Rothenberg, with a thesis on Three dimensional aspects of Seiberg-Witten Gauge Theory. Between 1997 and 2000 she worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a C.L.E. Moore instructor in the Department of Mathematics.
Between 2000 and 2010 she held a C3 position at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn and held an associate professor position at Florida State University in Tallahassee. She also held an honorary professorship at the University of Bonn. From 2008 to 2018 she was a full professor of Mathematics in the Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy of the California Institute of Technology. She is currently a professor in the mathematics department of the University of Toronto and a member of the Perimeter Institute.
She held visiting positions at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, the Mittag-Leffler Institute in Stockholm, the Isaac Newton Institute in Cambridge, and the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley, California.

Research

Marcolli's research work has covered different areas of mathematics and theoretical physics: gauge theory and low-dimensional topology, algebraic-geometric structures in quantum field theory, noncommutative geometry with applications to number theory and to physics models, especially related to particle physics, quantum gravity and cosmology, and to the quantum Hall effect.
She has collaborated with several other mathematicians and physicists, among them Yuri I. Manin and Alain Connes. Ten graduate students obtained their PhD under her supervision between 2006 and 2010.

Honors and awards

In 2001 she obtained the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz-Preis of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and in 2002 the Sofia Kovalevskaya Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. She was a plenary speaker in the 2008 European Congress of Mathematics in Amsterdam and an invited speaker of the 2010 International Congress of Mathematicians in Hyderabad.

Books authored

Books edited