Fields Medal, the Nobel Prize for Math, Awarded to Four Mathematicians

International Mathematical Union (IMU) announced the 2010 Fields Medal winners at the opening of the International Congress of Mathematicians  (ICM 2010) in Hyderabad, India.

Fields Medals are equivalent to Novel Prize for Mathematics and have been awarded since 1936 to path breaking young mathematicians below 40 years of age. However, unlike the Nobel Prize, Fields Medals are awarded only once in four years.

2010 Fields Medal Winners

The winners of 2010 Fields Medals are

• Elon Lindenstrauss: ICM says that Elon Lindenstrauss from Princeton University  is being awarded the 2010 Fields Medal “for his results on measure rigidity in ergodic theory, and their applications to number theory“.

• Ngô Bao Châu: receives the 2010 Fields Medal  “for his proof of the Fundamental Lemma in the theory of automorphic forms through the introduction of new algebro-geometric methods”. He is currently a Professor in the Faculté des Sciences at Orsay and Member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. In September 2010, he will be starting at the University of Chicago.
• Stanislav Smirnov: receives the 2010 Fields medal for the “proof of conformal invariance of percolation and the planar Ising model in statistical physics”. He is a professor at University of Geneva, Switzerland.
• Cédric Villani from Institut Henri Poincaré (IHP) in Paris receives the 2010 Fields Medal “for his proofs of nonlinear Landau damping and convergence to equilibrium for the Boltzmann equation”.

In addition to the Fields Medals, the winners of three other top Math awards, Nevanlinna Prize, Gauss Prize, and a new Chern Prize, were also announced today at ICM 2010.

Nevanlinna Prize

The Nevanlinna Prize is being awarded since 1982 to young scientists who have done outstanding research in theoretical computer science.  This prize is established to honor the Finnish mathematician Rolf Nevanlinna. Nevanlinna Prize is is awarded once every 4 years at the ICM meeting. Daniel Spielman from Yale University is the the winner of Nevanlinna Prize 2010 for his contributions to ”Linear Programming, algorithms for graph-based codes and applications of graph theory to Numerical Computing”.

Gauss Prize

Gauss Prize is being awarded  since 2006 to the top mathematicians in the field of applied mathematics, giving importance to the mathematical results that have spawned new areas of practical applications.  Yves Meyer, Professor Emeritus at École Normale Supérieure de Cachan, France, is the winner of Gauss Prize 2010 for his 

fundamental contributions to number theory, operator theory and harmonic analysis, and his pivotal role in the development of wavelets and multiresolution analysis.

Chern Prize

IMU announced a new award called Cher Prize this year for recognizing lifetime achievement of mathematicians. Chern prize is established to honor the late Chinese mathematician Shiing-Shen Chern. Louis Nirenberg from Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University (NYU), is the first winner of the Chen Medal 2010 for his role in the

formulation of the modern theory of non-liner elliptic partial differential equations and for mentoring numerous students and post-docs in this area.

Chern prize recipient receive a cash prize of $250,000 (USD), and $250,000 donations to organizations to support research, education, or outreach in mathematics.