Abel Prize

Abel Prize
Awarded for	Outstanding scientific work in the field of mathematics
Country	Norway
Presented by	Government of Norway
First awarded	2003
Official website	abelprize.no

The Abel Prize (Norwegian pronunciation: [ˈɑːbəl]) is an international prize awarded annually by the Government of Norway to one or more outstanding mathematicians.

Named after Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel (1802–29), the award was established in 2001 by the Government of Norway and complements its sister prize in the humanities, the Holberg Prize.

Along with the Fields Medal, the Abel Prize has often been described as the mathematician's "Nobel Prize". It comes with a monetary award of 6 million Norwegian kroner (NOK) (US$737,400).

The prize board has also established an Abel symposium, administered by the Norwegian Mathematical Society. The award ceremony takes place in the Atrium of the University of Oslo Faculty of Law, where the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded between 1947 and 1989.

The establishment of the Abel Prize was first proposed by Sophus Lie (1842–1899) in 1899 when he learned that Alfred Nobel's plans for annual prizes would not include a prize in mathematics. Lie's death marked an interruption in the establishment of the award, and King Oscar II's attempt to establish the award in 1902 was unsuccessful, complicated by the dissolution of the union between Sweden and Norway three years later.

Selection criteria

The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters declares the winner of the Abel Prize each March after selection by a committee of five international mathematicians. The committee is currently headed by John Rognes. The International Mathematical Union and the European Mathematical Society nominate members of the Abel Committee. The Norwegian Government gave the prize an initial funding of NOK 200 million (about US$23 million) in 2001. The funding is controlled by the Board, which consists of members elected by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

Anyone may submit a nomination, but self-nomination is not allowed. The nominee must be alive; however, if the awardee dies after being declared as the winner, the prize is awarded posthumously. The Abel Laureate is decided by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters based on the recommendation of the Abel Committee. Both Norwegians and non-Norwegians may serve on the Committee; they are elected by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and nominated by the International Mathematical Union and the European Mathematical Society.

History

The prize is awarded in the atrium of the Domus Media building of the University of Oslo Faculty of Law, where the Nobel Peace Prize was formerly awarded

The prize was first proposed to be part of the 1902 celebration of 100th anniversary of Abel's birth. Shortly before his death in 1899, mathematician Sophus Lie proposed establishing an Abel Prize when he learned that Alfred Nobel's plans for annual prizes would not include a prize in mathematics. King Oscar II was willing to finance a mathematics prize in 1902, 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.

After interest in the concept of the prize had risen in 2001, 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. Atle Selberg received an honorary Abel Prize in 2002, but the first actual Abel Prize was only awarded in 2003. A book series presenting Abel Prize laureates and their research was commenced in 2010. The first two volumes cover the years 2003–2007 and 2008–2012 respectively.

Laureates

Year	Laureate(s)	Citizenship	Institution	Citation	Ref
2003	Jean-Pierre Serre	French	Collège de 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 Atiyah; Isadore Singer	British; American	University of Edinburgh; Massachusetts Institute of Technology	"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 Lax	Hungarian American	Courant Institute	"for his groundbreaking contributions to the theory and application of partial differential equations and to the computation of their solutions"
2006	Lennart Carleson	Swedish	Royal Institute of Technology	"for his profound and seminal contributions to harmonic analysis and the theory of smooth dynamical systems"
2007	S. R. Srinivasa Varadhan	Indian American	Courant Institute	"for his fundamental contributions to probability theory and in particular for creating a unified theory of large deviation"
2008	John G. Thompson; Jacques Tits	American; Belgian French	University of Florida; Collège de France	"for their profound achievements in algebra and in particular for shaping modern group theory"
2009	Mikhail Gromov	Russian French	Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques Courant Institute	"for his revolutionary contributions to geometry"
2010	John Tate	American	University of Texas at Austin	"for his vast and lasting impact on the theory of numbers"
2011	John Milnor	American	Stony Brook University	"for pioneering discoveries in topology, geometry, and algebra"
2012	Endre Szemerédi	Hungarian American	Alfréd Rényi Institute and Rutgers University	"for his fundamental contributions to discrete mathematics and theoretical computer science, and in recognition of the profound and lasting impact of these contributions on additive number theory and ergodic theory"
2013	Pierre Deligne	Belgian	Institute for Advanced Study	"for seminal contributions to algebraic geometry and for their transformative impact on number theory, representation theory, and related fields"
2014	Yakov Sinai	Russian American	Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics and Princeton University	"for his fundamental contributions to dynamical systems, ergodic theory, and mathematical physics"
2015	John F. Nash, Jr.; Louis Nirenberg	American; Canadian/American	Princeton University Courant Institute	"for striking and seminal contributions to the theory of nonlinear partial differential equations and its applications to geometric analysis"

See also

• Fields Medal
• List of prizes, medals, and awards – mathematics

External links

• Media related to at Wikimedia Commons
• Official website of the Abel Symposium
• Weisstein, Eric W., "Abel Prize", MathWorld.