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Fields Medal
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Fields Medal |
 |
| The obverse of the Fields Medal |
| Awarded for |
Outstanding contributions in Mathematics |
| Presented by |
International Mathematical Union (IMU) |
| Country |
Hosted every four years, at a varying location |
| Reward |
US$15,000 |
| First awarded |
1936 |
| Last awarded |
2010 |
| Official website |
Official site |
The Fields Medal is a prize awarded to two, three, or four mathematicians not over 40 years of age at each International Congress of the International Mathematical Union (IMU), a meeting that takes place every four years. The Fields Medal is often viewed as the top honor a mathematician can receive.[1][2] It comes with a monetary award, which since 2006 is US$15,000.[3][4] Founded at the behest of Canadian mathematician John Charles Fields,[5] the medal was first awarded in 1936, to Finnish mathematician Lars Ahlfors and American mathematician Jesse Douglas, and has been awarded every four years since 1950. Its purpose is to give recognition and support to younger mathematical researchers who have made major contributions.
Conditions of the award
The Fields Medal is often described as the "Nobel Prize of Mathematics" for the prestige it carries,[6] though in most other ways the relatively new Abel Prize is a more direct analogue. In contrast with the Nobel Prize, the Fields Medal is awarded only every four years. The Medal also has an age limit: a recipient's 40th birthday must not occur before 1 January of the year in which the Fields Medal is awarded. As a result some great mathematicians have missed it by having done their best work (or having had their work recognized) too late in life. The 40-year rule is based on Fields' desire that
... while it was in recognition of work already done, it was at the same time intended to be an encouragement for further achievement on the part of the recipients and a stimulus to renewed effort on the part of others.
The monetary award is much lower than the roughly US$1.5 million given with each Nobel prize. Finally, Fields Medals have generally been awarded for a body of work, rather than for a particular result; and instead of a direct citation there is a speech of congratulation.
Other major awards in mathematics, such as the Abel Prize, recognise lifetime achievement, again making them different in kind from the Nobels, although the Abel has a large monetary prize like a Nobel. The Fields Medal has the prestige of the selection by the IMU, which represents the world mathematical community.
Fields Medalists
| Year |
ICM location |
Medalists[7] |
| 1936 |
 Oslo, Norway |
 Lars Ahlfors, Finland, University of Helsinki
 Jesse Douglas, USA, Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| 1950 |
Cambridge, United States |
 Laurent Schwartz, France, University of Nancy
Atle Selberg, Norway, Institute for Advanced Study |
| 1954 |
 Amsterdam, The Netherlands |
 Kunihiko Kodaira, Japan, Princeton University
Jean-Pierre Serre, France, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique |
| 1958 |
 Edinburgh, United Kingdom |
Klaus Roth, UK, University of London
René Thom, France, University of Strasbourg |
| 1962 |
 Stockholm, Sweden |
Lars Hörmander, Sweden, University of Stockholm
John Milnor, USA, Princeton University |
| 1966 |
 Moscow, Soviet Union |
Michael Atiyah, UK, University of Oxford
Paul Joseph Cohen, USA, Stanford University
Alexander Grothendieck, France, Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques
Stephen Smale, USA, University of California, Berkeley |
| 1970 |
Nice, France |
Alan Baker, UK, University of Cambridge
Heisuke Hironaka, Japan, Harvard University
Sergei Novikov, Soviet Union, Moscow University
John G. Thompson, USA, University of Cambridge |
| 1974 |
 Vancouver, Canada |
 Enrico Bombieri, Italy, University of Pisa
David Mumford, USA, Harvard University |
| 1978 |
Helsinki, Finland |
 Pierre Deligne, Belgium, Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques
Charles Fefferman, USA, Princeton University
Grigory Margulis, Soviet Union, Moscow University
Daniel Quillen, USA, Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| 1982 |
 Warsaw, Poland |
Alain Connes, France, Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques
William Thurston, USA, Princeton University
Shing-Tung Yau, USA[8], Institute for Advanced Study |
| 1986 |
Berkeley, United States |
Simon Donaldson, UK, University of Oxford
 Gerd Faltings, Germany, Princeton University
Michael Freedman, USA, University of California, San Diego |
| 1990 |
Kyoto, Japan |
Vladimir Drinfel'd, Soviet Union, Kharkov Institute of Physics and Technology
 Vaughan F. R. Jones, New Zealand, University of California, Berkeley
Shigefumi Mori, Japan, University of Kyoto
Edward Witten, USA, Institute for Advanced Study |
| 1994 |
 Zürich, Switzerland |
Jean Bourgain, Belgium, Institute for Advanced Study
Pierre-Louis Lions, France, Paris Dauphine University
Jean-Christophe Yoccoz, France, Paris-Sud 11 University
 Efim Zelmanov, Russia, University of Wisconsin |
| 1998 |
Berlin, Germany |
Richard Borcherds, UK, University of Cambridge
Timothy Gowers, UK, University of Cambridge
Maxim Kontsevich, Russia, Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques and Rutgers University
Curtis T. McMullen, USA, Harvard University |
| 2002 |
 Beijing, China |
Laurent Lafforgue, France, Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques
Vladimir Voevodsky, Russia, Institute for Advanced Study |
| 2006 |
 Madrid, Spain |
Andrei Okounkov, Russia, Princeton University
Grigori Perelman, Russia — Medal declined, St. Petersburg
 Terence Tao, Australia, University of California, Los Angeles
Wendelin Werner, France, Paris-Sud 11 University |
| 2010 |
 Hyderabad, India |
 Elon Lindenstrauss, Israel, Hebrew University of Jerusalem [9]
 - Ngô Bảo Châu, Vietnam-France[10][11][12], Paris-Sud 11 University and Institute for Advanced Study
Stanislav Smirnov, Russia, University of Geneva
Cédric Villani, France, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon[13] and Institut Henri Poincaré |
| 2014 |
 Seoul, South Korea |
TBD |
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 his own Fields Medal ceremony, held in Moscow, to protest Soviet military actions taking place in Eastern Europe.[14]
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."[15]
In 1982, the congress was due to be held in Warsaw but had to be rescheduled to the next year, due to political instability. 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 of Fermat'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.[16] 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.[17][18]
In 2006, Grigori Perelman, credited with proving the Poincaré conjecture, refused his Fields Medal[3] and did not attend the congress.[19]
The medal
The medal was designed by Canadian sculptor R. Tait McKenzie.[20]
- On the obverse is Archimedes and a quote attributed to him which reads in Latin: "Transire suum pectus mundoque potiri" (Rise above oneself and grasp the world).
The reverse of the Fields Medal
- On the reverse is the inscription (in Latin):
| “ |
CONGREGATI
EX TOTO ORBE
MATHEMATICI
OB SCRIPTA INSIGNIA
TRIBUERE
|
” |
Translation: "The mathematicians having congregated from the whole world awarded because of outstanding writings."
In the background, there is the representation of Archimedes' tomb, with the carving illustrating his theorem on the sphere and the cylinder, behind a branch. (This is the mathematical result of which Archimedes was reportedly most proud: Given a sphere and a circumscribed cylinder of the same height and diameter, both the ratio between their surface areas and the ratio between their volumes are equal to 2/3.)
The rim bears the name of the prizewinner.
Rank by countries
See also
References
- ^ "2006 Fields Medals awarded" (PDF). Notices of the American Mathematical Society (American Mathematical Society) 53 (9): 1037–1044. October 2006. http://www.ams.org/notices/200609/comm-prize-fields.pdf.
- ^ "Reclusive Russian turns down math world's highest honour". Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). 22 August 2006. http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2006/08/22/math-fields.html. Retrieved 26 August 2006.
- ^ a b "Maths genius turns down top prize". BBC. 22 August 2006.
- ^ Israeli wins 'Nobel' of Mathematics, JPost.com
- ^ "Fields Institute history". Fields.utoronto.ca. 1932-08-09. http://www.fields.utoronto.ca/aboutus/jcfields/fields_medal.html. Retrieved 2010-08-21.
- ^ Kenneth Chang (12 March 2007). "Journeys to the Distant Fields of Prime". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/13/science/13prof.html.
- ^ "List of Fields Medallists". International Mathematical Union (IMU). 8 May 2008. http://www.mathunion.org/general/prizes/fields/prizewinners. Retrieved 25 March 2009.
- ^ "Shing-Tung Yau". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shing-Tung_Yau.
- ^ "Israeli wins world's most prestigious math prize". ynet. 19 August 2010. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3939799,00.html. Retrieved 19 August 2010.
- ^ "Ngô Bảo Châu". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ng%C3%B4_B%E1%BA%A3o_Ch%C3%A2u.
- ^ "Le congrès international des mathématiciens". Société Mathématique de France. http://smai.emath.fr/IMG/pdf_ICM-L1v3l.pdf. Retrieved 2010-07-07.
- ^ "Ngô Bảo Châu nhận giải toán học Fields". BBC. 19 August 2010. http://www.bbc.co.uk/vietnamese/vietnam/2010/08/100819_nbchau_fields_award.shtml. Retrieved 19 August 2010.
- ^ Cipra, Barry (19 August 2010). "Fields Medals, Other Top Math Prizes, Awarded". Science NOW. http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/08/fields-medals-other-top-math-pri.html. Retrieved 19 August 2010.
- ^ Jackson, Allyn (10 2004). "As If Summoned from the Void: The Life of Alexandre Grothendieck" (PDF). Notices of the American Mathematical Society 51 (9): 1198. http://www.ams.org/notices/200410/fea-grothendieck-part2.pdf. Retrieved 26 August 2006.
- ^ Margulis biography, School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews, Scotland. Retrieved 27 August 2006.
- ^ Wiles, Andrew John, Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 27 August 2006.
- ^ Fields Medal Prize Winners (1998), 2002 International Congress of Mathematicians. Retrieved 27 August 2006.
- ^ Notices of the AMS, November 1998. Vol. 45, No. 10, p. 1359.
- ^ Nasar, Sylvia; Gruber, David (21 August 2006). "Manifold Destiny: A legendary problem and the battle over who solved it.". The New Yorker. http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060828fa_fact2. Retrieved 24 August 2006.
- ^ "Fields Institute - The Fields Medal". Fields.utoronto.ca. 1932-08-09. http://www.fields.utoronto.ca/aboutus/jcfields/fields_medal.html. Retrieved 2010-08-21.
Further reading
- Monastyrsky, Michael (1998). Modern Mathematics in the Light of the Fields Medal. Wellesley, MA: A. K. Peters. ISBN 1568810830
- Tropp, Henry S. (1976). "The Origins and History of the Fields Medal". Historia Mathematica 3 (2): 167–181. doi:10.1016/0315-0860(76)90033-1 .
External links
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