New members of the academy: art and mathematics combined!

New members of the academy: art and mathematics combined!

The North Rhine-Westphalia Academy of Sciences and Arts (AWK) welcomed twelve new members on May 16, 2025 as part of its annual celebration. Among them are two outstanding female scientists: Prof. Dr. Ursula Frohne and Prof. Dr. Eva Viehmann. The academy, which has existed since 1970 and has also integrated the arts since 2008, is characterized by the fact that it only accepts excellent researchers and artists. It currently has around 280 full members and 130 corresponding members who come from a wide range of specialist areas.

Prof. Dr. Ursula Frohne, art historian at the University of Münster, has been appointed since 2015 for her expertise in art history with a focus on modern and contemporary art. Her research covers contemporary art practices, including photography, film and digital art, as well as the political dimensions of visual culture. Before her professorship, she was chief curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Karlsruhe and a lecturer at the State University of Design. Frohne is also co-speaker of a collegiate research group that deals with access to cultural goods in digital change.

Research in the field of mathematics

Prof. Dr. As a mathematician, Eva Viehmann makes significant contributions to arithmetic geometry. She is interested in the connections between number theory and representation theory, particularly in the context of the Langlands program. Viehmann found evidence for previously suspected connections and introduced a new class of modular spaces. She was awarded the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize in 2024 for her outstanding achievements.

The Langlands program, originally proposed by Robert Langlands in the late 1960s, is a collection of conjectures that explore deep connections between number theory and geometry. The aim of these theories is to establish relationships between Galois groups in algebraic number theory and automorphic forms and the representation theory of algebraic groups. Edward Frenkel describes the Langlands program as the “grand unified theory of mathematics”. Since its formulation, the program has evolved and applies to many groups and fields.

Specific results resulting from this program include Wiles' proof of the modularity of semistable elliptic curves as well as Lafforgue's proof of the global Langlands correspondence for the general linear group in 1998. These advances are often based on complex technical methods and deep theoretical insights.

Overall, the admission of Prof. Dr. Frohne and Prof. Dr. Viehmann's addition to the Academy reflects the high appreciation for contributions from various scientific disciplines and shows the AWK's commitment to promoting outstanding achievements in research and art. Their future work is eagerly awaited, particularly in view of the ongoing developments in the area of ​​the Langlands program, which continues to be considered one of the central challenges of modern mathematics.

For further details about the Langlands program you can Wikipedia visit. You can find out more about the academy at Website of the University of Münster.