Wolfgang Lück

Wolfgang Lück (born 19 February 1957 in Herford) is a German mathematician who is an internationally recognized expert in algebraic topology.

After receiving his Abitur from the Ravensberger Gymnasium in Herford in 1975, he studied at the University of Göttingen where he obtained his Diplom in 1981 and his doctoral degree under Tammo tom Dieck in 1984.

His thesis was entitled Eine allgemeine Beschreibung für Faserungen auf projektiven Klassengruppen und Whiteheadgruppen.

He has also contributed to the development of the theory of L2-invariants (such as L2-Betti numbers and L2-cohomology) of manifolds, which were originally introduced by Michael Atiyah and are defined by means of operator algebras.

[1] From October 2019 to September 2022, he was spokesperson for the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics (HCM) in Bonn.