Prof. Dr. Günter M. Ziegler earned his doctorate in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge (USA) in 1987. After four postdoc years at the University of Augsburg and a research stay at Institut Mittag-Leffler in Stockholm, he came to Berlin in 1992, where he worked at the Konrad Zuse Zentrum (today’s Zuse Institute Berlin). Ziegler received his postdoctoral university instruction qualification (Habilitation) at Technische Universität Berlin, where he was professor of mathematics from 1995 to 2011. He began working at Freie Universität Berlin in 2011 and commenced a concurrent position as adjunct professor at Technische Universität Berlin in 2017. In 2006 he led the process of establishing the Berlin Mathematical School as a joint graduate school of Berlin’s three major universities.

Professor Ziegler began his first term as president of Freie Universität Berlin on 2018. Following his reelection in 2026, he is now serving his third term. From November 2018 to November 2020, he was the first spokesperson for the Berlin University Alliance, where he continues to serve in leadership roles: as a member of the board of directors and again as spokesperson (2024–2026). He served as a deputy chair on the executive board of the German U15 group of research-intensive universities from 2020 to 2022 and resumed serving on the board of German U15 in 2023, of which he continues to be a member.

Günter M. Ziegler is a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, and acatech – Germany’s National Academy of Engineering Sciences. He is also a fellow of the American Mathematical Society. From 2006 to 2008, Ziegler was the president of the German Mathematical Society, where he still serves as a member of the executive board. In addition, he was a member of the board of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities from 2010 to 2018 and a member of the senate of the German Research Foundation from 2014 to 2018.