Academic Weeks

The Spring and Autumn Academies include a program of lectures, permanent working groups and guided tours at the University of Ulm.

This program has been held twice a year since spring 1992 with great success and a steady number of about 400 to 600 participants.

These academy weeks were and are supported by the willingness and commitment of the lecturers within and outside the University of Ulm, who provide their knowledge and time during these training weeks.

If the entire range of the different academies is too extensive for you, if your forces no longer allow you to come for a whole week, or if you simply cannot find the time, we offer the opportunity to book individual lectures or a working group (AG) or also a Wednesday offer individually. We hope that you will - if possible - attend the entire offer, but we also understand if this is not possible for you.

Prof. Dr. Othmar Marti, March 2019

As soon as we are born, our loved ones release a lovingly birth announcement in numbers. Numbers accompany us all our lives, whether we like it or not. How many pretzels would you like to have? What class are you in? Numbers are the clips of this spring academy. In five lectures - from medicine to economics, from psychology to music - we want to explore their meaning in various fields of knowledge.

In first lecture the question: Can you quantify everything? will be discussed critically. Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Péter Horváth, business economist and honorary senator of the University of Ulm, as a representative of the economy, will illuminate and value our trustfulness in numbers.

The accompanying cultural event on Monday evening will be designed by the Scherer-Ensemble. Helen Willis (soprano), Heike Viefhaus (recitation), Markus Munzer-Dorn (lute) and Thomas Müller (baritone and conductor) will be presenting works by Morley, Dowland and Purcell, Rosseter and Bennet and texts by Shakespeare and Donne under the motto "Love and Farewell "

When we use numbers, we benefit from the cultural achievements of the past thousands of years. Everyone has contributed, people in Mesopotamia, in the Ganges-valley, in China, in Arabia and in Europe, to name only the most obvious to us. Prof. Dr. Ulrich Stadtmüller, Institute for Number Theory and Probability Theory, University of Ulm, and more recently with much time for reflection, tells us in a generally understandable lecture about the history of numbers.

You've probably wondered why, besides making money, so much data is collected about our health. Prof. Dr. med. Dr. phil. Eva Winkler, National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT) Heidelberg, will introduce us to the world of "big data" in medicine and research.

The lecture on "Big Data" calls for a contribution to statistics and their paradoxes. Any statement that a drug is effective (or not) conceals extensive and sophisticated statistical methods. Games with numbers: Some statistical paradoxes and how they are utilized are titled by Prof. Dr. Morten Moshagen, Department of Psychological Research Methods, University of Ulm in his contribution to numbers.

At the end of the academy week, we enter the world of music, the world of Johann Sebastian Bach. Andreas Weil, church musician, organist, choirmaster and composer has been intensively involved with the question of legend or truth for some years now? Number symbolism employed in the work of Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach's compositions are very structured. Chords are based on sophisticated number ratios of pitches, and the rhythms are not yet considered. Bach's world was also a world of (numbers) mysticism.