I like to refer to myself as a mathematician in the morning and an engineer in the afternoon. The two sides of my personality interact intensively. I will discuss some outcomes of this interaction: (1) LEDA, the library of efficient data structures and algorithms, (2) certifying algorithms, (3) an efficient and sound basis for geometric computing,and (4) experiments suggesting theorems.
Kurt Mehlhorn is a Director of the MPI for Informatics and Professor of Computer Science at Saarland University. He heads the algorithms and complexity group at the MPI for Informatics. He co-authored some 300 publications in the field, published six books, and is one of the people behind the LEDA software library. He graduated more than 80 students, many of whom have now faculty positions. He has received several prizes (Leibniz Award, EATCS Award, Zuse Medal, ACM Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award, Erasmus Medal of the Academia Europaea) for his work. He holds Honorary Doctorate Degrees from Magdeburg, Waterloo, Aarhus, Gothenburg and Patras universities and is an ACM Fellow. He is a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, Academia Europaea, the German Academy of Science and Engineering acatech, the US Academy of Engineering, and the US Academy of Science. From 2002 to 2008, he was vice president of the Max Planck Society. He is a co-founder of Algorithmic Solutions Software GmbH.
