Abel Prize
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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 been described as the "mathematician's Nobel" prize by Keith Devlin,¹ and is among the most prestigious awards in mathematics. It comes with a monetary award, which in 2008 was US$1.2 million.

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 one million USD, 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 $23,000,000 USD) in 2001. The prize is an attempt at creating publicity for mathematics, making the science more prestigious, especially for young people.

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

History

The prize was first proposed to be part of the 1902 celebration of 100th anniversary of Abel's birth.² 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.

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  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”

See also

• Fields Medal
• List of prizes, medals, and awards – mathematics
• Nemmers Prize in Mathematics
• Nevanlinna Prize
• Schock Prize
• Wolf Prize in Mathematics

References

1. ^ Abel Prize Awarded: The Mathematicians' Nobel, maa.org, April 2004.
2. ^ History of the Abel Prize

External links

• The Abel Prize official web site
• The Abel Symposium web site
• Eric W. Weisstein, Abel Prize at MathWorld.