Although Claudius Zibrowius has only been at the Ruhr University Bochum for a few weeks, his office is already all knotted up. Knotted ropes in all colours of the rainbow lie on the tables, some of them partially stuck in transparent Plexiglas balls. Next to them is a coffee mug depicting countless different knots - a promotional gift that couldn't have been more fitting. Zibrowius simply loves knots. Ever since he read a scientific article on the subject by the famous mathematician Dror Bar-Natan during his Master's degree, he couldn't get his mind off it. ‘The paper is one of the reasons why I still do maths today,’ he says. He has been doing this as Professor of Low-Dimensional Topology at the Faculty of Mathematics since April 2024.
