Gunter Malle

Gunter Malle (born 13 May 1960 in Karlsruhe)[1] is a German mathematician, specializing in group theory, representation theory of finite groups, and number theory.

Malle at Oberwolfach, 2006

Malle received his doctorate in 1986 from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology under the supervision of Heinrich Matzat with thesis Exceptional groups of Lie type as Galois groups.[2] He completed his habilitation in 1991 at Heidelberg University and from 1998 was a professor at Kassel University. Since 2005 he is professor at the Technische Universität Kaiserslautern.

Malle does research on linear algebraic groups, finite groups of Lie type and on local-global conjectures in finite-group representation theory, e.g. the Brauer height-zero conjecture,[3] the Alperin weight conjecture, and the McKay conjecture and its block-wise version known as the Alperin-McKay conjecture.[4] Malle's research also deals with the Cohen-Lenstra heuristic of the structure of class groups of quadratic number fields in algebraic number theory, the asymptotic distribution of Galois groups of number fields, and with the inverse problem of Galois theory.

In 1993 he began a collaboration with Michel Broué and Jean Michel concerning Spetses (named after the Greek island Σπέτσες where the program was initiated). The starting point was the question of whether every finite complex reflection group is a Weyl group of an object analogous to a finite group of Lie type. They baptized the unknown, yet to be constructed, objects Spetses.

Malle (left), Michel Broué, Jean Michel, Oberwolfach 2004

In 1998, he was an Invited Speaker with talk Spetses at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Berlin.[5]

In 1994 he received the Alexander von Humboldt Research Award for Franco-German scientific cooperation.