Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics
The Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics is an annual award of the Breakthrough Prize series announced in 2013. It is funded by Yuri Milner and Mark Zuckerberg and others.[1] The annual award comes with a cash gift of $3 million, and up to three laureates are chosen for the New Horizons in Mathematics Prize, at $100,000 which is intended for early-career researchers.
Motivation
The founders of the prize have stated that they want to help scientists to be perceived as celebrities again, and to reverse a 50-year "downward trend".[2] They hope that this may make "more young students [...] aspire to be scientists".[2]
Laureates
2015
The first awards of the Prize, worth $3 million to each recipient, were made in 2014 (for the year 2015) to:[3]
- Simon Donaldson – "For the new revolutionary invariants of 4-dimensional manifolds and for the study of the relation between stability in algebraic geometry and in global differential geometry, both for bundles and for Fano varieties."[4]
- Maxim Kontsevich – "For work making a deep impact in a vast variety of mathematical disciplines, including algebraic geometry, deformation theory, symplectic topology, homological algebra and dynamical systems."[5]
- Jacob Lurie – "For his work on the foundations of higher category theory and derived algebraic geometry; for the classification of fully extended topological quantum field theories; and for providing a moduli-theoretic interpretation of elliptic cohomology."[6]
- Terence Tao – "For numerous breakthrough contributions to harmonic analysis, combinatorics, partial differential equations and analytic number theory."[7]
- Richard Taylor – "For numerous breakthrough results in the theory of automorphic forms, including the Taniyama–Weil conjecture, the local Langlands conjecture for general linear groups, and the Sato–Tate conjecture."[8]
2016
The 2016 prize was announced in November 2015 and made to:
- Ian Agol – "For spectacular contributions to low dimensional topology and geometric group theory, including work on the solutions of the tameness, virtually Haken and virtual fibering conjectures."[9][10]
The 2016 New Horizons in Mathematics Prize was made to Larry Guth and André Neves. It was rejected by Peter Scholze.
2017
The 2017 prize was announced in December 2016, and it was made to:
- Jean Bourgain – "For multiple transformative contributions to analysis, combinatorics, partial differential equations, high-dimensional geometry and number theory."[11]
The 2017 New Horizons in Mathematics Prize was made to Mohammed Abouzaid, Hugo Duminil-Copin, and Benjamin Elias and Geordie Williamson.
2018
The 2018 prize was announced in December 2017, and it was made to:
- Christopher Hacon and James McKernan - "For transformational contributions to birational algebraic geometry, especially to the minimal model program in all dimensions."[12][13]
The 2018 New Horizons in Mathematics Prize was made to Aaron Naber, Maryna Viazovska, Zhiwei Yun, and Wei Zhang.
See also
Notes
- ↑ Overbye, Dennis (14 December 2013). "$3 Million Prizes Will Go to Mathematicians, Too". The New York Times. Retrieved 14 August 2018.
- 1 2 Markoff, John (10 November 2015). "Breakthrough Prize Looks to Stars to Shine on Science". The New York Times. Retrieved 14 August 2018.
Yuri Milner: 'We peaked 50 years ago and it has been a downward slope since then.'
- ↑ Chang, Kenneth (23 June 2014). "The Multimillion-Dollar Minds of 5 Mathematical Masters". The New York Times. Retrieved 14 August 2018.
- ↑ Mathematics Breakthrough Prize > Laureates > Simon Donaldson
- ↑ Mathematics Breakthrough Prize > Laureates > Maxim Kontsevich
- ↑ Mathematics Breakthrough Prize > Laureates > Jacob Lurie
- ↑ Mathematics Breakthrough Prize > Laureates > Terence Tao
- ↑ Mathematics Breakthrough Prize > Laureates > Richard Taylor
- ↑ The New York Times (6 November 2015). "Breakthrough Prizes Give Top Scientists the Rock Star Treatment". The New York Times. Retrieved 14 August 2018.
- ↑ Mathematics Breakthrough Prize > Laureates > Ian Agol
- ↑ Breakthrough Prize, 4 December 2016, BREAKTHROUGH PRIZE MARKS 5TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATING TOP ACHIEVEMENTS IN SCIENCE AND AWARDS MORE THAN $25 MILLION IN PRIZES AT GALA CEREMONY IN SILICON VALLEY
- ↑ Mathematics Breakthrough Prize > Laureates > Christopher Hacon
- ↑ Mathematics Breakthrough Prize > Laureates > James McKernan