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#1 2009-03-28 11:56:22
- JaneFairfax
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- Registered: 2007-02-23
- Posts: 6,868
Abel prize awarded to Mikhail Leonidovich Gromov
A French-Russian mathematician has won the Abel Prize for his work on advanced forms of geometry.
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#2 2009-03-28 15:15:05
- Identity
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- Registered: 2007-04-18
- Posts: 934
Re: Abel prize awarded to Mikhail Leonidovich Gromov
I thought the Fields Medal was the Nobel Prize of Maths
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#3 2009-03-28 18:48:18
- Jai Ganesh
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- Registered: 2005-06-28
- Posts: 48,413
Re: Abel prize awarded to Mikhail Leonidovich Gromov
Yes, you thought right, Identity.
The Field's Medal is the Nobel prize equivalent in Mathematics.
However, the Abel Prize too is sometimes refrred as the Nobel Prize of Mathematics.
The Fields Medal is often described as the "Nobel Prize of Mathematics" for the prestige it carries, though in most other ways the relatively new Abel Prize is a more direct analogue. The comparison is not entirely accurate because the Fields Medal is only awarded every four years. The Medal also has an age limit: a recipient's 40th birthday must not occur before January 1 of the year in which the Fields Medal is awarded. As a result many 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 Wolf Prize in Mathematics and 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.
It appears to me that if one wants to make progress in mathematics, one should study the masters and not the pupils. - Niels Henrik Abel.
Nothing is better than reading and gaining more and more knowledge - Stephen William Hawking.
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