Abel Prize

The Abel Prize is an international prize presented annually by the King of Norway to one or more outstanding mathematicians. The prize is named after Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel (1802–1829). It has often been described as the "mathematician's Nobel" prize[1][2][3][4][5][6] and is among the most prestigious awards in mathematics. It comes with a monetary award of six million kroner, which is approx. (2010) €740,000 or US$992,000.[7]

The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters annually declares the winner of the Abel Prize after selection by a committee of five international mathematicians. The committee is headed by Kristian Seip. The amount of money that comes with the prize is usually close to US$ 1 million, similar to the Nobel Prize, which is awarded in Sweden and Norway and excludes mathematics. Norway gave the prize an initial funding of NOK 200,000,000 (about US$23,000,000) in 2001. The prize is an attempt at creating publicity for mathematics, making the discipline more prestigious, especially for young people.

The prize board has also established an Abel symposium, administered by the Norwegian Mathematical Society.

Contents

History

The prize was first proposed to be part of the 1902 celebration of 100th anniversary of Abel's birth.[8] In 1899, shortly before his death, Sophus Lie proposed establishing an Abel Prize when he learned that Alfred Nobel's plans for annual prizes, made known in 1897, would not include a prize in mathematics. King Oscar II was willing to finance a mathematics prize in Abel's name, and the mathematicians Ludwig Sylow and Carl Størmer drew up statutes and rules for the proposed prize. However, Lie's influence waned after his death, and the dissolution of the Union between Sweden and Norway in 1905 ended the first attempt to create the Abel Prize.

In 2001, after interest in the prize had risen, a working group was formed to develop a proposal, which was presented to the prime minister of Norway in May. In August 2001, the Norwegian government announced that the prize would be awarded beginning in 2002, the two-hundredth anniversary of Abel's birth. The first prize was actually awarded in 2003.

Out of the first eight years (2003–2010), three of the prize winners (Lax, Varadhan and Gromov) have been mathematicians associated with New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, two (Tits and Gromov) are members of I.H.E.S. (Bures sur Yvette), and two are professors at the College de France (Serre, Tits). Five of them are American citizens, and three are French.

A book series recently commenced, with one volume every five years, will present the Abel Prize laureates and their research. The first volume[9] covers the years 2003–2007.

Laureates

Year Laureate(s) Nationality Citation
2003 Jean-Pierre Serre  France “for playing a key role in shaping the modern form of many parts of mathematics, including topology, algebraic geometry and number theory”
2004 Michael F. Atiyah
Isadore M. Singer		  United Kingdom /  Lebanon
 United States		 “for their discovery and proof of the index theorem, bringing together topology, geometry and analysis, and their outstanding role in building new bridges between mathematics and theoretical physics”
2005 Peter D. Lax  Hungary /  United States “for his groundbreaking contributions to the theory and application of partial differential equations and to the computation of their solutions”
2006 Lennart Carleson  Sweden “for his profound and seminal contributions to harmonic analysis and the theory of smooth dynamical systems”
2007 S. R. Srinivasa Varadhan  India /  United States “for his fundamental contributions to probability theory and in particular for creating a unified theory of large deviation”
2008 John G. Thompson
Jacques Tits		  United States;
 Belgium /  France		 “for their profound achievements in algebra and in particular for shaping modern group theory”
2009 Mikhail Gromov  Russia /  France "for his revolutionary contributions to geometry"
2010 John Tate  United States "for his vast and lasting impact on the theory of numbers"

See also

References

  1. ↑ Cipra, Barry (2009-03-26). "Russian Mathematician Wins Abel Prize". Science. http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/326/1. Retrieved 2009-03-29. 
  2. ↑ Geometer wins maths 'Nobel', nature.com, March 2009.
  3. ↑ El revolucionario geómetra Gromov, 'Nobel' de matemáticas, El Pais, March 2009
  4. ↑ Russian-born mathematician wins math's version of the Nobel, Scientific American blog, March 2009.
  5. ↑ Abel Prize Awarded: The Mathematicians' Nobel, Keith Devlin, maa.org, April 2004.
  6. ↑ Foderaro, Lisa W. (June 1, 2009), "In N.Y.U.'s Tally of Abel Prizes for Mathematics, Gromov Makes Three", New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/01/nyregion/01nyu.html 
  7. ↑ "French-Russian mathematician Gromov wins Abel prize," AFP, Mar 26, 2009
  8. ↑ History of the Abel Prize
  9. ↑ H. Holden; R. Piene, eds. (2010), The Abel Prize 2003–2007, Heidelberg: Springer, doi:10.1007/978-3-642-01373-7, ISBN 978-3-642-01372-0, http://www.springer.com/math/history+of+mathematics/book/978-3-642-01372-0 

External links