He retired a few years ago as Director of the Division of Mathematical Sciences at the National Science Foundation. Previously, he served as Chair of the Department of Mathematics at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). He is an Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at UIUC.
He earned an Engineering degree in Zurich, and a Ph.D. degree in Mathematics from the University of Zurich. He subsequently was a Research Fellow and Lecturer at the University of Paris, at Harvard University, the University of California at Berkeley, an Associate Professor at Wesleyan University, before joining the UIUC faculty in 1968, where he became a Full Professor in 1970.
He published over 100 articles and monographs, mainly on his research in differential geometry, in particular the geometry of foliations and geometric applications of partial differential equations. His bibliography lists nine books. He has been a Visiting Professor at the Universities of Buenos Aires, Auckland (New Zealand), Heidelberg, Rome, Santiago de Compostela, Leuven (Belgium), as well as at the Eidgenoessische Technische Hochschule in Zurich, the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn, Keio University in Tokyo, Tohoku University in Sendai, and Hokkaido University in Sapporo. He has given approximately 200 invited lectures at various institutions around the world.
He served as Managing Editor of the Illinois Journal of Mathematics. He has been a recipient of a UIUC Award for Study in a Second Discipline (Physics), a UIUC Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, and of a Public Service Award from the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM).
Dr. Tondeur recently chaired the Board of Governors of the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications at the University of Minneapolis. He served on the National Advisory Council of the Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute at the Research Triangle Park in Raleigh, North Carolina. He also served as a member of the National Committee on Mathematics of the U.S. National Research Council. He currently is a member of the International Scientific Advisory Board of the Canadian Mathematics of Information Technology and Complex Systems (MITACS) Centre of Excellence, and a Trustee of the Instituto Madrileno de Estudios Avanzadas-MATH (IMDEA-MATH) in Madrid. He is a member of the Committee on Science Policy of the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics, as well as of the Science Policy Committee and other Committees of the Mathematical Association of America.