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 Geometry, Trento, 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 Lectures: Geometric 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).