Hirzebruch is professor emeritus at the University of Bonn and was the director
of Max Planck Institut für Mathematik in Bonn from its beginning in 1980 and until 1995.
He was the first president of the European Mathematical Society (1992–96).
Hirzebruch has worked in topology, algebraic geometry, global differential geometry,
and number theory, and his contributions have been central for the development of modern mathematics.
Hirzebruch is one of the founders of modern K-theory.
His contribution to the theory building around characteristic classes was fundamental,
and he was the first to formulate a general Riemann–Roch theorem.
Hirzebruch’s contributions to the theories of modular forms, of algebraic surfaces,
and of 4-manifolds are well known, and his influential book Topological methods in
algebraic geometry from 1962 keeps appearing in new editions.
Hirzebruch initiated and organized the famous yearly conferences, Arbeitstagung,
in Bonn from 1957 on.
