Karsten Grove, The Rev. Howard J. Kenna, C.S.C. Professor of Mathematics, recently received a research award from the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung/Foundation in Germany. The Humbolt Foundation’s award allows individuals to travel to Germany and work on a research project of their choice in collaboration with a host. Grove is currently in Germany working with Prof. Werner Ballmann from the Mathematisches Institut in Universität Bonn and will return to campus in during the summer.
Grove’s work focuses on modern differential geometry. His contributions cover a wide variety of topics, from closed and isometry invariant geodesics to the construction of important new examples of manifolds of positive curvature. During his stay in Germany, Grove will continue his research on positively curved manifolds and related topics.
Grove is an internationally recognized leader in metric differential geometry and has immensely influenced the growth of modern Riemann geometry. His findings on the non-linear center of mass and critical point theory for distance functions, for example, are now considered basic tools in comparison geometry.
A Denmark native, Grove earned both a Master of Science and a Lic. Scient. (roughly equivalent to a Ph.D.) from Aarhus University in Denmark. He has edited a number of journals including Acta Mathematica, and extremely well established and prestigious mathematics journal. In 1990 he was also invited to speak at the International Congress of Mathematicians, the largest international congress in the mathematics community, in Kyoto, Japan.