Ergodic methods in dynamics

Feliks Przytycki's 60th birthday

Poster in full size

Feliks Przytycki's contribution to Dynamical Systems

During the conference, on Wednesday 25 April 2012, we are going to hold a special scientific session in honour of prof. Feliks Przytycki on the occassion of his 60th birthday.

Feliks Przytycki was born in Warsaw in 1951. He graduated from the University of Warsaw in 1974, presenting a master thesis written under supervision of Wiesław Szlenk. In 1977 he defended his PhD dissertation Hyperbolic endomorphisms of manifolds written under supervision of Karol Krzyżewski at the Institute of Mathematics of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IMPAN). After receiving his PhD, he joined the faculty of IMPAN and it is there where he received successive academic degrees: habilitation (in 1983) and the title of professor (in 1991). Since 2005, he is the head of the Department of Dynamical Systems at IMPAN. In 1998–2002 and 2006–2010 he was a scientific director and since 2010, he is the main director of IMPAN.

Feliks Przytycki has been awarded numerous prizes for his scientific achievements, among others Kazimierz Kuratowski Prize in 1981, Tadeusz Ważewski Prize of the Polish Mathematical Society in 1984, the Minister of Science and Higher Education Award in 1992, the Subsidy Mistrz (Master) of the Foundation for Polish Science in 1999-2001 and a number of Polish scientific grants.

Apart from his active participation in the Warsaw scientific life, Feliks Przytycki travelled a lot and spent much time abroad in several important scientific centres as a visiting professor, e.g. long term visits in IMPA (Brasil) in 1979/1980, IHES (France) in 1980/1981, Warwick (UK) in 1986, SUNY at Stony Brook (USA) in 1991, University of Yale (USA) in 1992, Hebrew University (Israel) in 1997 and many short-term visits. He lectured at a number of international scientific conferences all over the world and organised many important international conferences and other scientific events in Poland.

Feliks Przytycki was a coordinator of many European scientific programs, e.g. Centre of Excellence IMPAN-BC, Marie Curie Training Site BANACH, Marie Curie Transfer of Knowledge SPADE2 and CODY. Since 2003, he is the deputy director of the Committee of Mathematics of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He is the director of the Polish National Committee for the Cooperation with International Mathematical Union (IMU). He has been a member of editorial boards of the journals Ergodic Theory and Dynamical Systems, Fundamenta Mathematicae, Proyecciones and Studia Mathematica.

Teaching at the University of Warsaw has always been an important part of Feliks Przytycki's activities. He taught numerous courses for undergraduate and graduate students, e.g. Differential Equations, Qualitative Theory of Diffferential Equations, Complex Analysis, Holomorphic Dynamics, Kleinian Groups. Since many years, he leads the Dynamical Systems seminar at IMPAN. He was the supervisor of PhD theses of Mariusz Urbański, Anna Zdunik, Piotr Mormul, Krzysztof Barański, Bogusława Karpińska, Michał Rams and Ludwik Jaksztas.

The general research area of Feliks Przytycki is well described by the title of the present conference: Ergodic Methods in Dynamics. A major part of his scientific activity has been devoted to holomorphic dynamics. He is an author of numerous important and beautiful theorems. His main scientific achievements are described in a separate file.