mathematics

Giovanni Felder

Giovanni Felder is a mathematics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Giovanni Felder rather than just read about it. In short: Giovanni Felder (18 November 1958 in Aarau) is a Swiss mathematical physicist and mathematician, working at ETH Zurich. He specializes in algebraic and geometric properties of integrable models of statistical mechanics and quantum field theory.

Key takeaways

Giovanni Felder belongs to mathematics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Giovanni Felder to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Giovanni Felder from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Giovanni Felder (18 November 1958 in Aarau) is a Swiss mathematical physicist and mathematician, working at ETH Zurich. He specializes in algebraic and geometric properties of integrable models of statistical mechanics and quantum field theory.

Education and career Felder attended school in Lugano and Willisau District. He studied physics at ETH Zurich, where he graduated with M.Sc. in 1982 and with Ph.D. in 1986. His doctoral dissertation, entitled Renormalization Group, Tree Expansion, and Non-renormalizable Quantum Field Theories, was supervised by Jürg Fröhlich (and Konrad Osterwalder). Felder held postdoctoral positions from 1986 to 1988 at IHES, from 1988 to 1989 at the Institute for Advanced Study, and from 1989 to 1991 at the Institute of Theoretical Physics, ETH Zurich. From 1991 to 1994 he became an assistant professor of mathematics at ETH Zurich. From 1994 to 1996 he worked as professor of mathematics at the University of North Carolina. In 1996 he returned at ETH Zurich as professor of mathematics. From 2013 to 2019, he was the director of the Institute for Theoretical Studies at ETH Zurich. In 1994 Felder was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Zurich. He was elected member of the Academia Europaea in 2012 and fellow of the American Mathematical Society in 2013.

Research Felder's research involves mathematical problems motivated by physical ideas. In the late 1980s Felder did research with Krzysztof Gawedzki and Antti Kupiainen on the geometry of the Wess-Zumino-Witten model in conformal field theory. In 1989 he introduced a BRST approach to the "minimal two-dimensional conformal invariant models of Belavin, Polyakov and Zamolodchikov." With Alexander Varchenko and Vitaly Tarasov, Felder did research on various integrable models in quantum field theory and statistical mechanics and resulting special functions (such as the elliptic gamma function, elliptic quantum groups, and elliptic Macdonald polynomials). With Alberto Cattaneo in 2000 he gave a path integral interpretation of Kontsevich's deformation quantization of Poisson manifolds as well as a description of the symplectic groupoid integrating a Poisson manifold as an infinite-dimensional symplectic quotient. He supervised 22 doctoral students as of 2022, including Thomas Willwacher.

References

External links "Critical loci and the classical master equation | Giovanni Felder | Лекториум". YouTube. Oct 25, 2013. "Giovanni Felder - Elliptic quantum groups and elliptic equivariant cohomology". YouTube. Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques (IHES). June 13, 2017. "String Math 2021 - Giovanni Felder (ETH Zürich)". YouTube. Instituto de Matemática Pura e Aplicada. June 17, 2021.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Giovanni Felder

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Giovanni Felder claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In mathematics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Giovanni Felder before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Giovanni Felder ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Giovanni Felder

In research: Giovanni Felder appears in mathematics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Giovanni Felder in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Giovanni Felder is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1958 births, 20th-century Swiss mathematicians, 20th-century Swiss physicists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Giovanni Felder outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Giovanni Felder in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Giovanni Felder means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Giovanni Felder out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Giovanni Felder in simple terms?

Why does Giovanni Felder matter?

Because it connects several mathematics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Giovanni Felder?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Giovanni Felder.