Daniela Kühn facts for kids

Daniela Kühn (born in 1973) is a German mathematician. She is a special professor of Mathematics at the University of Birmingham in England. She is famous for her work in a field of math called combinatorics. This area of math deals with counting, arranging, and combining things. She also works in graph theory, which studies how things are connected.

About Daniela Kühn

Daniela Kühn studied at several universities. She earned a special math certificate from Cambridge University in 1997. Then, she received a diploma in Mathematics from the Chemnitz University of Technology in 1999. She completed her doctorate degree from the University of Hamburg in 2001. Her teacher for her doctorate was Reinhard Diestel.

After finishing her studies, Daniela Kühn worked as a researcher at the University of Hamburg and the Free University of Berlin. In 2004, she moved to the University of Birmingham to become a lecturer. A lecturer is like a teacher at a university. By 2010, she was given the special title of Mason Professor of Mathematics.

Her Research in Mathematics

Daniela Kühn's research focuses on how different things can be connected or arranged. She often works with "graphs," which are like maps showing points (called "vertices") and lines (called "edges") that connect them.

Understanding Infinite Graphs

In 2004, Daniela Kühn and her former teacher, Reinhard Diestel, wrote important papers about "infinite graphs." These are graphs that have an endless number of points and lines. They studied how to understand "cycles" (paths that start and end at the same point) and "spanning trees" (ways to connect all points without making any cycles) in these huge graphs.

Their work helped mathematicians understand these complex graphs better. One reviewer said their results were "extremely satisfactory" because they found ways to apply ideas from smaller, finite graphs to these much larger, infinite ones.

Solving Sumner's Conjecture

In 2011, Daniela Kühn and her team helped solve a big problem in graph theory called Sumner's conjecture. This conjecture is about how certain types of graphs, called "polytrees," can fit inside other types of graphs, called "tournaments."

A polytree is a graph that looks like a tree but can have lines pointing in specific directions. A tournament is a graph where every pair of points is connected by exactly one line, like the results of a sports tournament. Their proof was a very important step forward in understanding these kinds of graphs.

Awards and Recognition

Daniela Kühn has received many awards for her important work in mathematics.

Early Awards

In 2002, she won the Richard Rado Prize. This award is given every two years for the best doctorate paper in discrete mathematics in Germany. In 2003, she was one of the first people to win the European Prize in Combinatorics. She shared this award with two other mathematicians, Deryk Osthus and Alain Plagne.

Whitehead Prize and Royal Society

In 2014, Daniela Kühn and Deryk Osthus were given the Whitehead Prize by the London Mathematical Society. They received this award for their many discoveries in "extremal graph theory." This area of math looks at the largest or smallest possible graphs that have certain properties. Their work helped solve several long-standing problems in this field.

In 2014, she was also invited to speak at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Seoul, which is a very big and important meeting for mathematicians from all over the world. In 2015, she received a special award from the Royal Society. Most recently, in 2024, she was chosen to be a Fellow of the Royal Society. This is a very high honor for scientists in the United Kingdom.