Konrad Osterwalder

Konrad Osterwalder ( born June 3, 1942 in Frauenfeld ) is a Swiss physicist and mathematician. He was from 1995 to 2007 Rector of ETH Zurich and since September 2007 Rector of the United Nations University in Tokyo.

Life and work

Osterwalder went in Frauenfeld to high school and studied physics from 1961 to 1965 ( and besides philosophy) at the ETH Zurich. After his military service he was there from 1966 to 1970 assistant and received his PhD in 1970 with Klaus Hepp and Res Jost. He then worked 1970/1 as a postdoc at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University. In 1973, he was Assistant Professor and from 1973 Associate Professor at Harvard University in Cambridge (Massachusetts ). In 1977 he was appointed Professor of Mathematical Physics at the ETH Zurich.

From 1995 to 2007 Konrad Osterwalder was Rector of ETH Zurich. Osterwalder was to bridge for several months also president ad interim of the ETH Zurich, the period between the resignation of the ETH President Ernst Hafen ( 2 November 2006 ) and the inauguration of the new ETH President Ralph Eichler (1 September 2007). By the end of 2006 Konrad Osterwalder was also Chairman of the Bologna project management of the Swiss Conference of Rectors (CRUS ). Osterwalder since September 2007 Rector of the United Nations University in Tokyo.

Osterwalder was, inter alia, Visiting professor at the University of Texas at Austin, Harvard, at the IHES in Paris, at the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Munich, the University La Sapienza in Rome, the Universities of Naples and Tokyo and at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. In 1970 he was awarded the ETH medal. 1974 to 1978 he was a Sloan Fellow. He holds honorary doctorates from the University of Helsinki and a member of the Swiss Academy of Technical Sciences. He is a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society.

Konrad Osterwalder is also a member of the executive committees of the Ecole Polytechnique, Ecole des Mines in Paris, the Politecnico di Milano, the University of Italian Switzerland, the Technical University of Darmstadt (Chair) and is a member of the Club of Rome.

Osterwalder engaged in constructive quantum field theory. He is primarily known for the Osterwalder - Schrader axioms, which he formulated in Harvard with Robert Schrader in 1973. They provide a mathematical underpinning of the Euclidean formulation of quantum field theory.

He is married and has three children.