“Mathematics helped me overcome boredom”
One thing before we begin: although Prof. Christopher Deninger turned 65 this year, he will be staying on at the University as a senior professor until he reaches 70. Minimum. “My preference would be to carry on working right into old age and suddenly drop down dead one day: in my office – with the door closed, so that no one gets a fright,” he adds with a laugh.
Christopher Deninger laughs a lot, with a twinkle in his eye. Being a Professor of Mathematics is his dream job. He is an expert on arithmetical geometry, and working with colleagues, mathematics itself (of course), the beauty of abstraction – these are all things he really enjoys. And it is the students, in particular, that really fire his enthusiasm. “Every winter semester, there’s a burst of fresh energy coming into the faculty. These young people are fantastic – and it’s great to see them discovering their subject for themselves, overcoming resistance and, after a while, discussing the subject with you,” he says. There is just one thing he doesn’t like about his job: the administrative work which being a professor entails. Organising is something he enjoys, however.
As regards organising things well: this is a skill which Deninger the mathematician also needs when he organises heavy-metal concerts. With his mop of dark, curly hair and his preference for wearing black jeans and band T-shirts, he is well-known in Münster, outside the world of mathematics, because he has been organising concerts since 2012. Initially in the Faculty of Mathematics lecture hall, then subsequently in clubs, and, since 2015 (except during the Covid lockdowns) the free open-air concert “Das Schloss rockt” in front of Münster’s Schloss. One of his favourite bands was the symphonic metal band “Nightwish”, fronted in an earlier formation by soprano Tarja Turunen. When the band and the singer went separate ways in 2005, Deninger looked around for something comparable – a heavy metal band with a singer with a strong voice. He discovered the Romanian band “The Hourglass”, featuring soprano Alma, and organised more concerts for them in Germany after their debut in 2012. He subsequently provided similar support for lots of other up-and-coming bands.
Christopher Deninger is married and has two grown-up children. While he was still at school he assembled radios with a soldering iron, and his ambition was to understand the physics behind the technology. For this, he first needed mathematics, though. He took a look at some old textbooks from his father’s bookshelf – his father was a doctor of chemistry – and son Christopher soon noticed how easy he found it to understand mathematical formulae. Later, he studied Mathematics at the University of Cologne and completed his PhD there at the age of just 23. He achieved his habilitation at the University of Regensburg with Prof. Jürgen Neukirch, a number theorist. In 1989 he was appointed to a professorship at the University of Münster.
In 1992, Deninger was awarded the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize by the German Research Foundation – the most important research prize in Germany. In 2003 there followed his admission to the Leopoldina German National Academy of Sciences. As spokesman, he was instrumental in getting Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) 478 in Mathematics awarded to Münster; the current Collaborative Research Centre 1442 – “Geometry: Deformations and Rigidity” – is now the third CRC at Münster.
His imprint is also one of those on the Cluster of Excellence “Mathematics Münster”: together with Prof. Mario Ohlberger, Christopher Deninger is a spokesman for the Cluster, which started its work in early 2019.
Deninger discovered his love of mathematics when he was about twelve years old, in his “second home” Tokyo. At that time, his father had taken up a post in Japan and the whole family moved from Krefeld to the Japanese capital for four years. When he moved to the German School in Tokyo, he had to catch up on one year of Euclidian geometry – which he did in one day. He noticed that he had no trouble keeping up. Indeed, he found mathematics so easy that in Class 10 he gave coaching to Abitur students three years older than himself. “My problem was that I used to get bored so easily. But I overcame the problem by discovering mathematics – which was a great relief,” he remembers.
On Sunday he finds the time to play football – just for fun, on Sentruper Höhe in Münster. Although he had to take a break for a while when he broke his arm, he’ll soon be back playing in his old team. The team’s coach is Ousseni Labo, a former player in the national team in Togo. Deninger sums it up as follows: “In our faculty I help other people to acquire skills. On the football pitch it’s the other way round.”
Author: Christina Hoppenbrock
This article is from the university newspaper wissen|leben No. 6, 4 October 2023.