Martin Grötschel
Martin Grötschel (born 10 September 1948) is a German mathematician known for his work in combinatorial optimization, polyhedral combinatorics, and operations research. He led the Zuse Institute Berlin (ZIB) as Vice President from 1991 to 2012 and then as President from 2012 to 2015. He also served as President of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW) from 2015 to 2020.
Grötschel was born in Schwelm, Germany. He earned a diploma in mathematics with a minor in economics in 1973 from the University of Bochum, completed his PhD at the University of Bonn in 1977 under Bernhard Korte, and received his habilitation in operations research at Bonn in 1981. He became a full professor of applied mathematics at the University of Augsburg in 1982. From 1991 until his retirement in 2015, he was a full professor for information technology at Technische Universität Berlin while also working at ZIB.
He has held influential roles in many scientific bodies. He was on the Executive Committee of the German Mathematical Society (DMV) from 1989 to 1996, serving as DMV President from 1993 to 1994. He was on the Executive Committee of the International Mathematical Union (IMU) from 1999 to 2014 and served as IMU General Secretary from 2007 to 2014. Since 2011 he has been a member of the Einstein Foundation Berlin’s Executive Board, serving as Chair from 2011 to 2015. He co-founded and led the DFG Research Center Matheon, focusing on mathematics for key technologies.
Grötschel’s main research areas are graph theory, linear and mixed-integer optimization, and operations research. He made important contributions to solving the Traveling Salesman Problem and to understanding the cutting-plane method. His widely cited work with Lovász and Schrijver on the ellipsoid method helped advance combinatorial and convex optimization. In recent years he has applied mathematical modeling to real-world problems in industry, including production planning, transportation, energy systems, logistics, and telecommunications. He has also been involved in electronic information and communication, library systems, Open Access, and Open Science, and has promoted digital humanities during his presidency at the BBAW.
Grötschel has received many honors. He won the Fulkerson Prize in 1982 for work on the ellipsoid method with Lovász and Schrijver and the John von Neumann Theory Prize in 2006. He also received the George B. Dantzig Prize in 1991 and the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize in 1995, as well as the EURO Gold Medal in 2004. He was an invited speaker at the 2006 International Congress of Mathematicians. He has honorary doctorates from the University of Karlsruhe (2006), the Vietnamese Academy of Sciences and Technology (2007), Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg (2008), and the University of Augsburg (2011). Since 2011 he has been Distinguished Affiliated Professor at the Technical University of Munich. He is a member of several academies: the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (since 1995), the US National Academy of Engineering (foreign member, since 1999), acatech (since 2003), the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (since 2005), the Chinese Academy of Sciences (foreign member, since 2015), The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS, since 2016), and Academia Europaea (since 2017).
Martin Grötschel is married to Iris Grötschel (since 1976) and they have three daughters. He is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading experts in combinatorial optimization.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 02:37 (CET).