Life
Peitgen studied mathematics, physics and economics from 1965 until 1971 in Bonn, later working for six years at the Institute for Applied Mathematics at the University of Bonn under Christian Fenske, where he received his PhD in 1973. His doctoral dissertation was entitled “Asymptotische Fixpunktsätze und Stabilität” (English: “Asymptotic Fixed-point Theorems and Stability”).
After receiving his habilitation in 1977, he first taught as a private docent in Bonn before being awarded a professorship in mathematics at the University of Bremen. There, he was deeply involved in the establishment and development of an Institute for Dynamical Systems, where in 1982 he set up a computer graphics laboratory for mathematical experiments. Since 1992, Peitgen has served as the founder and director of the Center for Complex Systems and Visualization (Centrum für Complexe Systeme und Visualisierung - CeVis) at the University of Bremen. His research work emphasizes dynamical systems, numerical analysis, image analysis and data analysis, as well as the use of computers in image-based medical diagnostics.
From 1985 until 1991, Peitgen was a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Santa Cruz; since 1991 he has been a professor of mathematics at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. In 1995, he founded the Center for Medical Image Computing, MeVis Research GmbH, in Bremen, which became a Fraunhofer Society institute at the beginning of 2009 and is now called the Fraunhofer MEVIS - Institute for Medical Image Computing. Peitgen still manages the institute. In 1997, Peitgen and some of his colleagues founded a new company, MeVis Medical Solutions AG, MMS, which has been listed on the German stock market since 2007. MMS is one of the world’s leading independent producers of software products for image-based medicine, particularly digital radiology. With its software solutions, it provides medical practitioners with substantial added value in screening and diagnostics as well as therapy and intervention planning for cancer, particularly breast cancer, neurology and lung conditions. Peitgen is the Chairman of the Supervisory Board.
Peitgen has been appointed to chairs at several German and American universities and has served as a visiting professor at universities in Belgium, Brazil, Canada, the USA, Mexico and Italy. He is the author of several award-winning books and films that have helped to publicize fractal geometry and chaos theory around the world and is co-editor of several professional journals with an international readership. The scientific disciplines in which he specializes include mathematics, computer science and medicine: dynamical systems, numerical analysis, fractal geometry, chaos theory, computer graphics, image processing, data analysis and IT support for image-based medical diagnostics and treatment.
In 1992, Peitgen was elected as a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts and in 2008 as a member of the Goettingen Academy of Sciences.
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