ICMAT

MATILDE MARCOLLI

Professor of mathematics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) Department of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy.

Among her other distinctions, she was awarded the Heinz Maier Leibnitz Prize del Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft in 2001, and in 2002 the Sofja Kovalevskaya Prize from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the German Government ZIP Program. In addition, she was a plenary speaker at the 2008 European Congress of Mathematics in Amsterdam, as well as being a guest speaker at the 2010 International Congress of Mathematicians, held in Hyderabad (India)

Marcolli gave the course “Feynman integrals, periods and motives” as part of the Clay Institute of Mathematics Summer School “Periods and Motives: Feynman amplitudes in the 21st century”, held in 2014 at the ICMAT.

Field of Research:

Marcolli’s research work covers a broad area of mathematics and theoretical physics. She has worked on Gauge Theory, Low-dimensional Geometric Topology, Algebraic-Geometric Structures in Quantum Field Theory, Non-commutative Geometry, Quantum Mechanics, Feynman integrals, periods and motivos… She is currently interested in Computational Linguistics.

Laura Moreno Iraola. Matilde Marcolli (Como, Italy, 1969) is a professor at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) Department of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy. She is a curious scientist who has never been afraid to change her field of research. After pursuing a brilliant career in Geometry and Topology, she has in recent years devoted her research to Computational Linguistics. Her work in this field consists in parametrizing the way in which languages function. To this end, and based on human language, models are constructed that can be applied to computers, without addressing the evolution or the acquisition of languages.

At the outset of her career she focused on theoretical physics in subjects relating to the so-called Gauge Theory, which are used to describe the fundamental forces of nature. She subsequently applied these tools to the study of Low-dimensional Topology. She then switched fields again, this time to Non-commutative Geometry, a subject in which she is regarded all over the world as an expert.

While acknowledging that much of her work has been carried out shoulder to shoulder with leading researchers who in general have been men, Marcolli believes that the inequality gap between the sexes in the world of mathematical research is narrowing.