ERC Grant for Mathematician Franz Schuster

Soap bubbles, integrals and geometry: Franz Schuster from the Vienna University of Technology receives an ERC grant for his research in Convex Geometry. Why are soap bubbles spherical? For centuries mathematicians have wondered about such questions. In the last few decades, the field of geometric analysis, in which properties like volume and surface are investigated, has thrived. Franz Schuster from the Institute of Discrete Mathematics and Geometry at the Vienna University of Technology has now received an 'ERC Starting Grant' from the European Research Council ERC, to the value of approximately one million Euros. With this grant, Schuster can expand his research team and further investigate the connections between the theory of geometric inequalities and other important areas of mathematics. A Round Garden does not Need a Long Fence - Legend has it that the Phoenician Queen Dido was granted as much land as she could enclose with a leather band. Which shape was she supposed to choose in order to obtain as large an area as possible? In Mathematics, the solution to this problem is expressed by the 'isoperimetric inequality': the area of a two dimensional shape is always smaller or equal to the square of the circumference divided by four pi.