Habilitation colloquium of Dr. Roswitha Rissner

On February 19, 2024, Dr. Roswitha Rissner held the habilitation colloquium entitled “On the algebraic and arithmetic structure of commutative rings”.

In her lecture, she began by describing the emergence of modern algebra through number theory and geometry. From Fermat’s last theorem and Gabriel Lame’s failed attempt to prove it, to Richard Dedekind and the introduction of the abstract objects of rings and the algebraic description of Riemann surfaces, to Emmy Noether, who laid the foundations of modern algebra.

Furthermore, Roswitha Rissner presented results from her research on “non-unique factorizations” and “associated primes”. In doing so, she impressively managed to explain the underlying ideas and her considerable research successes without overburdening the audience with technical details or assuming in-depth knowledge of (modern) algebra.

Finally, Roswitha Rissner presented some open questions. Her fantastic lecture and her results so far suggest that we can expect many more scientific contributions from Roswitha Rissner to the field of modern algebra.

Personal details: Roswitha Rissner studied mathematics at Graz University of Technology. She received her doctorate in mathematics in 2015 with the dissertation “Integer-valued polynomials”. After post-doc years at Graz University of Technology, Roswitha Rissner has been working at the University of Klagenfurt since 2018. Since 2020, she has been a member of the coordination team of the doc.funds doctoral school “Modeling – Analysis – Optimization of discrete, continuous, and stochastic systems” at the Departments of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Klagenfurt.

In July 2023, Roswitha Rissner submitted her habilitation thesis entitled “On the algebraic and arithmetic structure of commutative rings”; in October, a habilitation committee and external reviewers were appointed by the Senate. After the habilitation colloquium and the meeting of the habilitation committee, the documents were forwarded to the Senate and the Rector, who are responsible for the next steps in the procedure.