CV and More

Education and career                                                                                 

                 1965  Finished high school (HBS-B). 
            1965-71  Mathematics study at the University of Amsterdam (M.Sc.) 
            1971-73  Stay at the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques (IHÉS) in Bures- sur-Yvette (Fr.) on a stipend
                           of the Dutch Organisation for the Advancement of Pure Research (ZWO).
            1973-74  Junior position at the University of Amsterdam.
                 1974  Ph.D. with N.H. Kuiper (June).
            1974-75  Postdoctoral Research Assistant at the University of Liverpool. 
            1975-87  Professor at the University of Nijmegen.
            1987-90  Professor at the University of Amsterdam. 
           Fall 1990  Visiting professor at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor). 
       Spring 1991  Visiting professor at the University of Utah (Salt Lake City). 
        1991-2013  Professor at the University of Utrecht. 
        2013-2020  Professor at the Yau Mathematical Sciences Center, Tsinghua University (Beijing).
                2020-  Long term visitor University of Chicago.    

Sabbaticals and long term visits

            Fall 1976 Sonderforschungsbereich für Theoretische Mathematik (Bonn, Germany).
            Jan 1978  IHÉS (Bures-sur-Yvette, France)
       Spring 1980  Yale University (New Haven, USA): course on Singularities.
            Jan 1982  IHÉS (Bures-sur-Yvette, France)
 Jan-March 1983  IHÉS (Bures-sur-Yvette, France)
            Jan 1985  IHÉS (Bures-sur-Yvette, France)
           Fall 1985  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: special year on Singularities.
       Spring 1987  Columbia University (New York, USA)
          May 1987  Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, USA)
       Spring 1990  TATA Institute for Fundamental Research (Bombay, India).
          May 1993  Mathematics Sciences Research Institute (Berkeley, USA)
       Spring 1997  IHÉS (Bures-sur-Yvette, France)
       Spring 2002  Mathematics Sciences Research Institute (Berkeley, USA)
       Spring 2006  Laboratoire Jean Dieudonné (Université Nice, France) 
          May 2007  Institut Mittag-Leffler (Djursholm, Sweden)
          Sept 2008  Scuola Normale Superiore (Pisa, Italy)
          June 2010  Scuola Normale Superiore (Pisa, Italy)
            Fall 2011 Mathematics Sciences Center at Tsinghua University (Beijing, PR China)
            Jan 2013  Chinese University of Hong Kong
       March 2013  Mathematics Sciences Center at Tsinghua University (Beijing, PR China)
   February 2016  University of Chicago (USA)
    Jan-Febr 2017  University of Chicago (USA)
  Febr-June 2018  University of Chicago (USA)
    Jan-Febr 2019  University of Chicago (USA)
    Jan-June 2020  University of Chicago (USA)
   Sept-Oct 2021  Institut Mittag-Leffler (Djursholm, Sweden)

Selected invited lectures

1978  International Congress of  Mathematicians at  Helsinki (Aug. 15-23).
1979  Mathematische Arbeitstagung Bonn (June).
1980  Plenary talk at the Congress of the Dutch Mathematical Society.
1980  Singularities Conference in Katata, Japan (Sept. 3-9), sponsored by the Taniguchi Foundation.
1981  A.M.S. Symposium 
Singularities at Arcata (July 20-Aug. 7).
1984  Algebraic Geometry Conference sponsored by the CMS in Vancouver (1984, July 1-12).
1992  First European Congress of Mathematicians at Paris (July 6-10).
1993  Séminaire Bourbaki (March).
1995  Mathematische Arbeitstagung Bonn (June).
1995  A.M.S. Symposium 
Algebraic Geometry at Santa Cruz (July-Aug.).
2000  Séminaire Bourbaki (March).
2004  Bob MacPherson's 60th birthday celebration, Inst. for  Adv. Study, Princeton (Oct.).
2006  25th anniversary Max Planck Institut für Mathematik, Bonn (April).
2007  
Mathematische Arbeitstagung Bonn (June).
2008  
Crafoord Prize Symposium (Kontsevich and Witten laureates) (April).
2010  International Congress of Chinese Mathematicians (Distinguished International Lecturer), Beijing (Dec.).
2017  Plenary 
talk International Congress of Chinese Mathematicians at Guangzhou (Dec.).

Invited lecture series

 1976  Lectures on Period mappings for Singularities.
           SFB Theoretische Mathematik (Bonn, Germany):
 1990  Lectures on Intersection Cohomology and L2-cohomology,
           
TIFR (Bombay, India).
 1993  Lectures on the (Inter)section Cohomology of Algebraic Varieties.
           Regional Geometry Institute at Park City, 10 x 60 min.  (July).
 1999  Minicourse moduli spaces of curves ICTP Summerchool 1999,
           Moduli Spaces in Algebraic Geometry, 
Trieste.
 2005  Plücker Lectures: Automorphic forms and geometrically meaningful compactification,
           University of Bonn (Jan.).
 2009  
Lectures on Hodge theory (with Claire Voisin),
           Summer School on Hodge Theory and Algebraic GeometryTrento, 5 x 90 min. (Sept.).     
 2010  Minicourse on the KZ system,
            De Giorgi Center in the Program on Configuration Spaces, Pisa, 3 x 90 min. (June).
 2011  
Joseph Fels Ritt Lectures: Two lectures on the Topological Characterization of the KZ-system,
           Columbia University, New York (Jan.).
 2011  Shiing-Shen Chern LecturesGeometric Invariant Theory and the theory of Automorphic Forms,
            Mathematical Science Center Tsinghua University, Beijing (Dec.)
 2012  Three lectures on the WZW system,
           ICMAT School on conformal blocks  ICMAT Madrid (Oct.)
 2013  Minicourse on Rational Surfaces and Singularities,
           Chinese University of Hong Kong, 3 x 90 min. (Jan.).
 2013  Course on Rational Surfaces and Singularities, 
           Mathematical Sciences Center Tsinghua, 8 x 90 min. (March).
 2013  Lectures on Locally Symmetric Varieties and Moduli,
           RIMS Kyoto, 3 x 60 min. (June).
 2016  Lectures on the Stable Cohomology of the Satake Compactification of Ag,
           U. of Chicago, 4 x 100 min. (February).
 2018  Lectures in compactications of locally symmetric 
varieties,
           Shanghai Center for Mathematical Sciences (Fudan U.), 3 x 60 min. (September).

Editorial boards

Journals:
Algebraic Geometry,
EMS Surveys in Mathematical Sciences,
Pure and Applied Mathematics Quarterly 

Book series:
North-Holland Mathematical Library, Elsevier (but this seems to have died).
Surveys in Modern  Mathematics, joint publication by Higher Education  Press inside China and International Press in the West.

Past editorships:
1997-2001  Journal of Algebraic Geometry,
1995-2003  Indagationes Mathematicae,
1993-2005  Compositio Mathematicae,
2002-2014  Journal of the European Mathematical Society.
2002-2020  Michigan Mathematical Journal

Meetings (co-organization, membership of their scientific committees)

1979 Singularity Conference Oberwolfach, Sept. 2-8, with Theodor Bröcker and Dirk Siersma.
1980 Geometry Symposium Utrecht, Aug. 27-29 1980, with Floris Takens and Dirk Siersma (and
         co-editor of its proceedings).
1985 Singularity Conference Oberwolfach, Aug. 16-24, with Egbert Brieskorn and Horst Knörrer.
1993 Arbeitsgemeinschaft Homology and intersection theory of moduli spaces of curves, with 
         Carl-Friedrich  Bödigheimer, Oberwolfach April 12-17.
1993 Singularity Conference Luminy, with Francois Loeser and Ignacio Luengo July 19-24.
1997 Complex Geometry: relations with mathematical physics, August 24-30, with Arnaud Beauville, 
         Fabrizio Catanese, Christian Okonek.
1998-99 Special year on operads ending with a workshop, with I. Moerdijk.
1999 Complex Geometry: varieties of low dimension, Oberwolfach August 22-28, with Arnaud Beauville, 
         Fabrizio Catanese, Christian Okonek.
1999 Codirector 
ICTP Summerchool 1999, Moduli Spaces in Algebraic Geometry, with Lothar Göttsche, 
         Joseph le Potier and M.S. Narasimhan (Trieste).
2000 
Algebraic geometry 2000, with Mark Green, Luc Illusie, Kazuya Kato, Shigeru Mukai, Shuji Saito,
         Sampei Usui  (Azumino, Japan).
2001 Complex Geometry: interactions between algebraic, differential and symplectic geometry,
         Oberwolfach  August 26-Sept. 1, with Arnaud Beauville, Fabrizio Catanese, Christian Okonek.
2003 Complex Geometry: mirror symmetry and related topics, Oberwolfach August 24-30, with Arnaud
         Beauville, Fabrizio Catanese, Christian Okonek.
2005 
Arithmetic and geometry around hypergeometric functions at Istanbul, with Friedrich Hirzebruch,
         Rolf-Peter Holzapfel, Masaaki Yoshida, Michel Jambu, Le Dung Trang, Paula Cohen, Igor 
         Dolgachev,  Shigeyuki Kondo (June).
2005 Meeting commemorating 
Hans Freudenthal's centennial,  with Wilberd van der Kallen and Jan
         Strooker, Utrecht (Sept.).
2007 Algebraic Geometry (Jozef Steenbrink's 60th birthday conference), with Gert Heckman and Dirk 
         Siersma, Nijmegen.
2008 
Workshop on Algebraic Geometry, with Bas Edixhoven and Gerard van der Geer at Lorentz Center 
         (Leiden, June).
2008 
Workshop on The Geometric Langlands program, with Gert Heckman and Eric Opdam, at Lorentz
         Center (Leiden, June).
2009 
Workshop on the Classification of Algebraic Varieties, with Carel Faber and Gerard van der 
         Geer  (Schiermonnikoog, May).
2011 Park City Mathematics Institute 
Topology and Geometry of Moduli Spaces, with Dick Hain and Benson
         Farb (Park City, Utah, July).
2011 
Recent progress on moduli spaces and special varieties. Workshop as part of the Tsinghua
         International Mathematics Forum, with Lizhen Ji, Yat-Sun Poon, Shing-Tung Yau (Sanya, Dec.).
2014 
Geometry of Special Functions, with Eric Opdam and Maarten Solleveld. Conference in honor of 
         Gert Heckman. (Nijmegen, Jan 30-31),
2014 
Moduli spaces of irreducible symplectic varieties, cubics and Enriques surfaces, with F. Bogomolov,
         V. Gritsenko, and D. Markouchevitch (Lille, March 24-28),
2014 
Graduate Workshop on Moduli of Curves, with Samuel Grushevsky and Robert Lazarsfeld (Simons
         Center, Stony Brook July 7 – 18),
2014 
Seoul ICM 2014 satellite conference Algebraic and Complex Geometry, with 8 others (Daejeon,
         Korea, August 6-10),
2015 
Moduli Spaces in Geometry, conference in honor of Christian Okonek, with Carlos Simpson and
         Nigel Hitchin (CIRM, Luminy, Oct. 26-30).

International scientific committees

          1994  Panel to select speakers for the section Algebraic Geometry of the 1994 ICM in Zürich.
 1994-2000  Foreign member of the selection committee Max Planck Institut für Mathematik Bonn.
          2000  Panel to select winners of the prizes for 
European Young Mathematicians at the ECM in 
                    Barcelona.
 2000-2009  Foreign member scientific committee Flemish Research Organization (
FWO).
          2004  Panel to select speakers for the 4th 
ECM in Stockholm (2004).
 2000-2009  Member of the Wissenschaftliche Beirat 
Max Planck Institut Bonn.
 2007-2017  Scientific Advisory Board of the 
Felix Hausdorff Center Bonn (chair 2008-2012).
 2009-2011  Advisory Committee of the Mathematical Sciences Center of Tsinghua University (Beijing).
2009, 2010  Jury Final Competition 
S.-T. Yau awards.
          2010  Jury Final Competition 
Hang Lung Mathematics Awards.
         2010-  Selection Committee of the Shiing-Shen Chern lecturers.  
          2016  International committee New World Mathematics Awards.  

Other professional activity

(Omitted are administrative involvement at my own department, national scientific committees, memberships of Ph.D. juries, and appointment committees here and abroad.)

1980-1986 With Dirk Siersma (Utrecht) and Jozef Steenbrink (at the time in Leiden) I initiated the
                   Singularity Intercity Seminar, a project sponsered by the ZWO, which in scale and set-up, was
                   probably the first of its kind in Mathematics in the Netherlands.
1993-2001 With Gerard van der Geer, Robbert Dijkgraaf, Carel Faber and Frans Oort I initiated a 
                   NWO-sponsered project of similar size, called Algebraic Curves and Riemann surfaces.
1999-2005  Coordinator of the BeNeLux node of the European Algebraic Geometry Network EAGER.
2001-2004  Chair of the Dutch Mathematical Society, which during my tenure acquired the predicate Royal and
                   is now called the 
Koninklijk Wiskundig Genootschap.
2006-2012  Involvement National Cluster Geometry and Quantum Theory (which I helped initiate in 2003).

Theses written under my direction

Harm van der Lek: 
     The homotopy type of complex hyperplane complements,  Sept. 1983, Nijmegen.
Wil A.M. Janssen: 
     
Skew-symmetric vanishing lattices, Feb. 1985,  Nijmegen.
Hans J.M. Sterk: 
     
Compactifications of the period space of Enriques surfaces, Sept. 1988, Nijmegen.
Martin Pikaart: 
     
Moduli spaces of curves: stable cohomology and Galois covers,  Sept. 1997, Utrecht.
Marco Boggi: 
 
     Compactification of moduli spaces of curves
,  Nov. 1998, Utrecht.
Franziska Bittner: 
     
Euler characteristics of varieties and mappings,  Jan. 2003  Utrecht.
Barbara N. van den Berg: 
     
On the abelianization of the Torelli group, Oct. 2003 Utrecht.
Rogier W. Swierstra:  
     
Moduli spaces of cubic hypersurfaces through a period map,  April 2008, Utrecht.
Alex L. Boer: 
     
A unitary structure for the graded quotient of conformal blocks,  Nov. 2008, Utrecht. 
Bart van den Dries: 
     Degenerations of cubic fourfolds and holomorphic symplectic geometry, March 2012, Utrecht.
Dali Shen: 
     Hyperbolic Structures on a toric arrangement complement, February 2015, Utrecht. 
Zhiwei Zheng: 
     On Geometry of the Cubic Fourfolds, June 2019, Tsinghua. 
Bin Wang:  
     
Parahoric Hitchin Systems, July 2020, Tsinghua.
Yunpeng Zi: 
     Geometry of the Winger Pencil, Moduli and Monodromy,
 November 2021, Tsinghua.


Go here for an (annotated) publication list

Membership of learned societies

Ordinary member of the Koninklijke Nederlandse Academie van Wetenschappen (KNAW) since 1995.
Fellow of the American Mathematical Society of its inaugural class (2012).