Abel Prize 2011

 

John Willard Milnor, the wizard of higher dimensions, gets the Abel Prize, which is regarded as the “Mathematician's Nobel”.

COURTESY: THE NORWEGIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE AND LETTERS

John Willard Milnor.The citation says: “All of Milnor's works display marks of great research: profound insights, vivid imagination, elements of surprise and supreme beauty.”

AS the month of October is for Nobel Prizes, March has been, in the past eight years, for the prestigious Abel Prize in mathematics conferred by The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. One of the giants of modern mathematics, John Willard Milnor of the Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Stony Brook University, New York, United States, reputed for his work in differential topology, K-theory and dynamical systems, has been chosen by the Academy for this year's Abel Prize. The decision was announced by the President of the Norwegian Academy, Oyvind Osterud, on March 23. Milnor will receive the award from His Majesty King Harald at a ceremony in Oslo on May 24.

The Abel Prize has widely come to be regarded as the “Mathematician's Nobel”. Instituted in 2001 to mark the 200th birth anniversary of the Norwegian mathematical genius Niels Henrik Abel (1802-1829), it is given in recognition of contributions of extraordinary depth and influence to mathematical sciences and has been awarded annually since 2003 ( Frontline, April 20, 2007). The prize carries a cash award of six million Norwegian kroner, which is about €750,000 or $ 1 million, similar to the amount of a Nobel Prize. Unlike the other major award in mathematics, the Fields Medal, which is given once in four years at the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) to young mathematicians not over 40 years of age on January 1, the Abel Prize, just as the Nobel, has no age limit.

The past winners of the prize include such illustrious names as Jean-Pierre Serre (2003), Sir Michael Atiyah and Isadore M. Singer (2004), Peter D. Lax (2005), Lennart Carleson (2006), Srinivasa S.R. Varadhan (2007), John Griggs Thompson and Jacques Tits (2008), Mikhail Leonidovich Gromov (2009) and John Torrence Tate (2010). The Abel Prize winner is selected by a committee of five international mathematicians headed by Ragni Piene of the University of Oslo. The International Mathematical Union (IMU) and the European Mathematical Society (EMS) nominate members of the Abel Committee. Besides Piene, the committee for this year's award included Bjorn Engquist of the University of Texas at Austin, M.S. Raghunathan of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), David Donoho of Stanford University and Hendrik W. Lenstra of Leiden University in the Netherlands.