Prof. Dr. Dr.-Ing.h.c. Heinz-Otto Peitgen
Heinz-Otto Peitgen is a German mathematician who has taught at the University of Bremen, the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton.
His books on chaos and fractals were worldwide bestsellers for several decades.
His research began in pure and applied mathematics and later extended to financial mathematics, mathematics education, computer graphics, and, ultimately, he spearheaded the digital transformation of medicine.
© Peter Rigaud
PEOPLE WHO SHAPED MY PATH OR WERE OTHERWISE INSTRUMENTAL FOR MY PATH
It is important for me to acknowledge that my path and my work have been shaped by many people who guided, inspired, and helped me. Again and again, I seemed to bump into individuals who left such a strong mark on me that my path changed significantly from that point on.
Some of them were monumental scientists, such as the late Friedrich Hirzebruch, the late Manfred Eigen, the late Benoit B. Mandelbrot, the late Ed Lorenz, and my advisor Christian Fenske. Some were monumental composers, such as the late György Ligeti, the late Iannis Xenakis, and Jean-Claude Risset, or great artists like Volker Banfield, Caroline Kirchhoff-Brinkmann, Paavo Jaervi, the late Jürgen “LIT” Fischer, Rainer Mordmueller, Bernd Altenstein, the late Ludwig Wilding, Gisela Eufe, Joan Bennàssar, and Peter Luechinger. Others were outstanding doctors, including Klaus J. Klose, the late Jan H. C. L. Hendriks, Kathy Schilling, Jon Wiener, Hans Junkermann, Joachim Teubner, and Koichi Tanaka. And there were colleagues such as the late Peter H. Richter, Ludwig Arnold, Diederich Hinrichsen, Jürgen Timm, Dieter Praetzel-Wolters, the late Ralph Abraham, Ed Landesman, the late Kurt Georg, Klaus Schmitt, Eugen Allgower, Arnold Mandell, the late Jim Brewer, and Markus Hohenwarter, the founder and creator of GeoGebra, as well as Alexander Deichsel and the late Klaus Brandmeyer, who introduced me to the art of branding.
In retrospect, it seems that the admiration I felt for Eigen, Mandelbrot, or Ligeti was certainly for their outstanding work, but perhaps even more for their maverick character—their courage to leave the mainstream and open up new perspectives. Gradually, their example, our acquaintance, and, in some cases, friendship inspired similar attitudes in me
Gerhard Klawitter, my math teacher in high school (Wüllenweber‑Gymnasium Bergneustadt), sparked my passion for mathematics. He was an exceptional teacher for students who were especially receptive to the subject. His class of 1965 celebrated its 50th graduation anniversary (Abitur) with him (fifth from the left) in attendance.
At the University of Bonn, my teacher was the late Friedrich Hirzebruch, one of the foremost mathematicians and an exemplary educator. It felt as though mathematics was being created as he lectured. His style was fresh and captivating, and it profoundly shaped my own approach to teaching.
The late William T. Bethea III was my instrument flight instructor. Learning to fly solely by reference to instruments is demanding, but once mastered it becomes a joy beyond words. Bill not only taught me the formal curriculum required for the IFR license; more importantly, he passed on the practical skills needed to survive challenging real‑world situations, drawing on his rich experience.
He graduated from The Citadel in Charleston in 1967 and served honorably in the United States Army. From 1968 to 1969 he flew helicopters on search‑and‑rescue missions behind the front lines in Vietnam, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross. He remained a passionate aviator and airshow performer throughout his life.
The late Jan H. C. L. Hendriks, radiologist and world expert in breast cancer diagnosis, played a key role in establishing breast cancer screening in the Netherlands in the early 1990s. His program subsequently became the standard in many European countries. When I met Jan around 1996, he quickly shaped my thinking and sparked my interest in the immense practical and scientific challenges of breast cancer screening.
Our research at MeVis Research, and later at Fraunhofer MEVIS, was strongly guided by his principles and convictions. He became one of our most important advisors and a loyal personal friend. When I designed and launched the first model project for breast cancer screening in Germany at the end of the 1990s, Jan’s guidance and example were crucial. Without his influence and the convictions he instilled in me, I would likely have collapsed in the face of the strong anti‑screening opposition in Bremen.
Hartmut Jürgens and Carl Evertsz co‑founded the commercial spin‑off MeVis Technology GmbH with me in 1997. Hartmut had been one of my first students at the University of Bremen, and Carl joined my institute CeVis in 1991 after working as a postdoctoral researcher with Benoit B. Mandelbrot.
Several additional companies were created during our subsequent commercial activities between 1997 and 2007, before all of them were merged into the newly formed MeVis Medical Solutions AG. A successful IPO on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange followed in November 2007. Carl served as CEO, and I chaired the Supervisory Board until 2015.
From left: Richard D. Voss, Terry Perciante, Evan Maletsky, and me (Lee Yunker had passed away by the time this picture was taken). This was the core team for many mathematics teacher‑enhancement initiatives at Fermilab in Chicago, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, NCTM, and later in South Florida, funded by the NSF (A and B) over nearly two decades from 1994 to 2012.
The late Benoit B. Mandelbrot influenced far more than just my research interests; he reshaped my entire frame of reference within the sciences. I first met him in 1985, and we soon became lifelong friends. In the picture above he is on the left, next to Richard D. Voss; on the far right is Dietmar Saupe. We are standing in front of a hand-painted poster for the event “The Fractal Cosmos”, which I organized as a “science meets the arts” program at UCSC in Santa Cruz in 1986.
Dietmar was my first student at the University of Bremen and later became a coauthor of the books The Science of Fractal Images, Chaos and Fractals, and several other publications. When Richard came to Florida Atlantic University in 1995, he joined my efforts in regional and national mathematics teacher enhancement programs funded by the NSF (A and B).
The late Peter H. Richter, Professor of Physics at the University of Bremen, and I founded what was probably the first computer graphics laboratory for mathematical experiments in Europe in 1983. Our award-winning bestseller The Beauty of Fractals would never have come into existence without Peter.
Klaus J. Klose, then Head of Radiology at the University Hospital of Marburg, played a crucial role in sparking my interest in medical image computing. In the fall of 1991, he presented a problem in liver surgery that occupied me for more than two decades and ultimately led me to found MeVis Research gGmbH in 1995, an independent non-profit research center that later became Fraunhofer MEVIS.
Quite unexpectedly, the late György Ligeti crossed my path in 1985, after Manfred Eigen had directed him to Peter Richter and me. I had always been passionate about music of almost every genre—except contemporary music. That changed forever when I met Ligeti and became his friend. It really took just one meeting, and I was transformed. Why? Just listen to this captivating performance of his music and you will understand. His decision to dedicate his 17th Etude to me will keep us connected for as long as I live.
Wilhelm Berghorn was initially a student of mine and became a loyal friend. He wrote his doctoral thesis on wavelets and, from the very beginning, was interested in applying his skills to financial markets. As a result, he, Carl Evertsz, and I founded a company, Financial Technology Solutions AG, which we sold a few years later. Willy then joined Fraunhofer MEVIS and later MeVis Medical Systems AG, where he successfully contributed to building our medical business.
His true inclination, however, always remained with the mathematics of finance. In 2015, we founded a new company, Mandelbrot Asset Management GmbH, which successfully launched an investment fund in July 2015: Mandelbrot Market Neutral. It turned out that the subject of his thesis—originally driven by pure mathematical curiosity and applied in medical imaging, for example in the Visible Human Project—became instrumental for the management strategy of this fund.
In January 2015, we celebrated the 25th anniversary of Lehrerakademie e.V. Bremen.
My mathematics teacher friends Reimund Albers, Heidi Christiansen, Gisela Gründl, Claudia Homburg, Klaus Lies, and I, together with the shakespeare company bremen and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, organized around 25 national annual teacher enhancement programs in Bremen. Our NSF-funded work in South Florida in 1991 energized our German activities and went even further by integrating music and theater into mathematics education.
Dietmar Saupe (center) and the late Hartmut Jürgens were my first graduate—and later doctoral—students at the University of Bremen. They became key figures in our numerical and computer-graphical work. Hartmut took charge of our early laboratories starting in 1981 and of all their successors. He eventually became deputy director of CeVis, the Center for Complex Systems and Visualization, and played an important role in founding MeVis Research GmbH in 1995. Dietmar joined me and played significant roles during two life-changing sabbaticals at the University of Utah and later when I accepted a professorship at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Black was my favorite color of dress in the late 1980s, when I spent several years as a Harley enthusiast. This passion led to some unexpected consequences—most notably, it influenced the clothing style of Dr. Ian Malcolm in the movie Jurassic Park.