Jens Marklof first arrived in Bristol in 1997, shortly after his PhD at the University of Ulm, to take up a postdoctoral position at Hewlett-Packard’s Basic Research Institute for the Mathematical Sciences. He was offered a lectureship at the University in the same year, which he took up in 1999 after spending time in Cambridge and Paris as a Fellow of the European Postdoctoral Institute. Marklof has been at the University of Bristol ever since, as lecturer and researcher, serving as Head of Pure Mathematics, School Director for Postgraduate Research, Head of the School of Mathematics, and most recently Dean of the Faculty of Science. He delivered a plenary address at the International Congress of Mathematical Physics in Prague 2009, and was an invited section speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Seoul 2014. In 2015 Marklof was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and his many awards include a LMS Whitehead Prize in 2010. He is currently the President of the London Mathematical Society and Chair of the Campaign for Mathematical Sciences.

The award of this kind of named chair is one of the highest distinctions that the University can award, and Jens follows in a line of distinguished Bristol mathematicians in the 105 years since the position was created. Find out more about the Henry Overton Wills Chair in Mathematics.