Bonn's Max-Planck-Institute: A New Building and a New Era

582 NOTICES OF THE AMS VOLUME 45, NUMBER 5 S ince its founding in 1982, the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics (MPI) in Bonn has become a major international center for mathematics research. With the money and effort that have poured into eastern Germany since the fall of Communism, mathematical enterprises are blooming in places like Leipzig and Berlin, the latter of which is the site of the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in August of this year (the first time since 1904 that the ICM will be in Germany). Nevertheless, the MPI in Bonn retains its role as the top research institute for pure mathematics in Germany. Much of the credit for the success of the MPI goes to its founding director, Friedrich Hirzebruch, who has made enormous contributions to rebuilding mathematics research in Germany after World War II. With Hirzebruch’s retirement from the directorship in 1995 and the Institute’s imminent move to fine new quarters smack in the center of Bonn’s old town, the MPI seems poised to enter a new era.