Professor Jürgen Berndt
Telephone: +44 020 7848 2814
Email: jurgen.berndt@kcl.ac.uk
Office: S4.30, Strand Building, Strand Campus
Title: Professor in Geometry
Personal Website
Biography
Jürgen Berndt has been Head of Department of Mathematics since August 2009. He studied mathematics and business economics at the University of Cologne, where he obtained his PhD in 1989. He was then awarded a one-year fellowship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) to pursue a research project at Michigan State University. After completion of the project he returned to the University of Cologne and earned his habilitation in 1995. In 1997 he was appointed as Lecturer at the University of Hull, and was soon promoted to Senior Lecturer and then to Reader. In 2004 he was appointed to the chair of mathematics at University College Cork, a position which was first occupied by the English mathematician and philosopher George Boole. During his period in Cork he was Head of Department of Mathematics. In April 2009 he joined King’s College as Professor of Mathematics.
Jürgen held positions as visiting researcher or professor at several institutions including Tokyo Institute of Technology, National University of Cordoba, Keio University, Tokyo Metropolitan University, and Sophia University. His research interests revolve around geometrical problems with algebraic, analytic or topological aspects. Particular topics of interest are the geometry of submanifolds, curvature of Riemannian manifolds, geometry of homogeneous manifolds, and Lie group actions on manifolds. He wrote two research monographs and more than 40 research articles. Many of his research results were obtained in collaboration with mathematicians from Argentina, Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain, United Kingdom and the USA.
Research Interests
The research interests revolve around geometrical problems with algebraic, analytic or topological aspects. Particular topics of interest are the geometry of submanifolds, curvature of Riemannian manifolds, geometry of homogeneous manifolds, and Lie group actions on manifolds. A current research project concerns the classification of cohomogeneity one actions, and more general of hyperpolar actions, on Riemannian symmetric spaces of noncompact type. The simplest such spaces are the hyperbolic spaces over the four normed real division algebras R, C, H and O. In general, a Riemannian symmetric space of noncompact type is a homogeneous space G/K of a noncompact real semisimple Lie group G for which the isotropy subgroup K is maximal compact in G. The Riemannian metric on G/K is determined in a natural way by the Killing form of G. Symmetric spaces have a beautiful geometric structure and arise in different areas in mathematics and physics. Another research project concerns the characterization of submanifolds in symmetric spaces in terms of geometric data.
Selection of Publications
Here is a complete list of publications.