award for maths

Fields Medal

The Fields Medal, officially known as International Medal for Outstanding Discoveries in Mathematics, is a prize awarded to two, three, or four mathematicians not over 40 years of age at each International Congress of theInternational Mathematical Union (IMU), a meeting that takes place every four years. The colloquial name is in honour of Canadian mathematician John Charles Fields.

The Fields Medal is often described as the "Nobel Prize of Mathematics" for being traditionally regarded as the most prestigious award in the field of mathematics;

Year	ICM location	Medalists[10]	Institution	Nationality
1936	Oslo	Lars Ahlfors Jesse Douglas	University of Helsinki Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1950	Cambridge	Laurent Schwartz Atle Selberg	University of Nancy Institute for Advanced Study
1954	Amsterdam	Kunihiko Kodaira Jean-Pierre Serre	Institute for Advanced Study Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
1958	Edinburgh	Klaus Roth René Thom	University College London University of Strasbourg
1962	Stockholm	Lars Hörmander John Milnor	University of Stockholm Princeton University
1966	Moscow	Michael Atiyah Paul Joseph Cohen Alexander Grothendieck Stephen Smale	University of Oxford Stanford University Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques University of California, Berkeley	None
1970	Nice	Alan Baker Heisuke Hironaka Sergei Novikov John G. Thompson	University of Cambridge Harvard University Moscow State University University of Cambridge
1974	Vancouver	Enrico Bombieri David Mumford	University of Pisa Harvard University
1978	Helsinki	Pierre Deligne Charles Fefferman Grigory Margulis Daniel Quillen	Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques Princeton University Moscow State University Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1982	Warsaw	Alain Connes William Thurston Shing-Tung Yau	Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques Princeton University Institute for Advanced Study
1986	Berkeley	Simon Donaldson Gerd Faltings Michael Freedman	University of Oxford Princeton University University of California, San Diego
1990	Kyoto	Vladimir Drinfeld Vaughan F. R. Jones Shigefumi Mori Edward Witten	Kharkiv Institute for Low Temperature Physics University of California, Berkeley Kyoto University Institute for Advanced Study
1994	Zürich	Jean Bourgain Pierre-Louis Lions Jean-Christophe Yoccoz Efim Zelmanov	Institute for Advanced Study Paris Dauphine University Paris-Sud 11 University University of California, San Diego
1998	Berlin	Richard Borcherds Timothy Gowers Maxim Kontsevich Curtis T. McMullen	University of California, Berkeley and University of Cambridge University of Cambridge Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques and Rutgers University Harvard University
2002	Beijing	Laurent Lafforgue Vladimir Voevodsky	Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques Institute for Advanced Study
2006	Madrid	Andrei Okounkov Grigori Perelman Terence Tao Wendelin Werner	Princeton University None (Saint Petersburg) University of California, Los Angeles Paris-Sud 11 University
2010	Hyderabad	Elon Lindenstrauss Ngô Bảo Châu Stanislav Smirnov Cédric Villani	Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Princeton University Paris-Sud 11 University and Institute for Advanced Study University of Geneva École Normale Supérieure de Lyon and Institut Henri Poincaré	-
2014	Seoul	TBD

[edit]Landmarks

In 1954, Jean-Pierre Serre became the youngest winner of the Fields Medal, at 27. He still retains this distinction.

In 1966, Alexander Grothendieck boycotted the ICM, held in Moscow, to protest Soviet military actions taking place in Eastern Europe.^[11]

In 1970, Sergei Novikov, due to restrictions placed on him by the Soviet government, was unable to travel to the congress in Nice to receive his medal.

In 1978, Grigory Margulis, due to restrictions placed on him by the Soviet government, was unable to travel to the congress in Helsinki to receive his medal. The award was accepted on his behalf by Jacques Tits, who said in his address: "I cannot but express my deep disappointment — no doubt shared by many people here — in the absence of Margulis from this ceremony. In view of the symbolic meaning of this city of Helsinki, I had indeed grounds to hope that I would have a chance at last to meet a mathematician whom I know only through his work and for whom I have the greatest respect and admiration."^[12]

In 1982, the congress was due to be held in Warsaw but had to be rescheduled to the next year, due to martial law introduced in Poland 13 Dec 1981. The awards were announced at the ninth General Assembly of the IMU earlier in the year and awarded at the 1983 Warsaw congress.

In 1990, Edward Witten became the first and so far only physicist to win this award.

In 1998, at the ICM, Andrew Wiles was presented by the chair of the Fields Medal Committee, Yuri I. Manin, with the first-ever IMU silver plaque in recognition of his proof ofFermat's Last Theorem. Don Zagier referred to the plaque as a "quantized Fields Medal". Accounts of this award frequently make reference that at the time of the award Wiles was over the age limit for the Fields medal.^[13] Although Wiles was slightly over the age limit in 1994, he was thought to be a favorite to win the medal; however, a gap (later resolved by Taylor and Wiles) in the proof was found in 1993.^[14][15]

In 2006, Grigori Perelman, who proved the Poincaré conjecture, refused his Fields Medal^[5] and did not attend the congress.^[16]

In 2010, Ngo Bao Chau (French-Vietnamese nationality) became the first person from one of the developing countries to win this award.




The Carl Friedrich Gauss Prize for Applications of Mathematics is a mathematics award, granted jointly by the International Mathematical Union and the German Mathematical Society for "outstanding mathematical contributions that have found significant applications outside of mathematics". The award receives its name from theGerman mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss.




The Chern Medal is an international award recognizing outstanding lifelong achievement of the highest level in the field ofmathematics..The prize is given at the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) which is held every four years.
2010 Louis Nirenberg – "for his role in the formulation of the modern theory of non-linear elliptic partial differential equations and for mentoring numerous students and post-docs in this area