St. Anford mathematician wins Fields Medal

[rudy235]

Hey! my Alma Mater has produced a most distinguished Mathematician (and he is only 37!)


Stanford mathematician wins Fields Medal, ‘Nobel of math’


http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/201...37362386_8.htm

From left to right, Cauchar Birkar, Alessio Figalli, Peter Scholze and Akshay Venkatesh — the mathematicians who won the Fields Medals Award, math’s most prestigious prize, at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on August 1, 2018.<br />(Pablo Costa / ICM2018)

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — A Stanford mathematician is among four men who on Wednesday were awarded this year’s Fields Medal, a prestigious award that many describe as the Nobel Prize of mathematics.

Given every four years to up to four recipients, the prize goes to mathematicians under 40. The winners were announced during the International Congress of Mathematicians being held in Rio de Janeiro.

Akshay Venkatesh, 36, has been at Stanford since 2008, and for the past year has been on sabbatical at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

A press release from Stanford says Venkatesh, from Perth, Australia, graduated from high school at 13 and went on to the University of Western Australia, where he became the youngest student ever to graduate with first-class honors in pure math. He earned a doctorate from Princeton.

His work has been in number theory, where the breadth of his expertise has drawn acclaim. “Most number theorists tend to work on one side or the other because each aspect is already quite big and it’s very difficult to assimilate the tools from all the different areas,” said his Stanford colleague Brian Conrad in the university press release.

The release went on: “One substantial area of Venkatesh’s work has been finding more ways in which homogenous dynamics can be used in number theory. For example, he describes a ball bouncing inside a triangle when the ball doesn’t slow down. His math asks questions about what spaces the ball avoids or prefers and how this changes if the triangle’s sides are curved. He then uses those ideas to solve problems in number theory.”

The other three winners were:

Peter Scholze, 30, of the University of Bonn, Germany.
Caucher Birkar, 39, of the University of Cambridge, England.
Alessio Figalli, 34, of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.
Upsetting the celebration, someone stole Birkar’s 14-karat gold medal after the awards ceremony. Organizers said they were cooperating with authorities to retrieve the prize.


This was the first time the congress has been held in Latin America.

[ET_]

To be clear, Alessio Figalli is ITALIAN, even if he teaches in Zurich.

Luigi proud of being Italian today.

[rudy235]

Originally Posted by ET_

To be clear, Alessio Figalli is ITALIAN, even if he teaches in Zurich.

Luigi proud of being Italian today.

Only today, Luigi?

i was talking about the Alum of Stanford California Akshay Venkatesh, 36 aka little Ramanujan.

Not to speak less of the other three meritorious recipients!

[axn]

Originally Posted by rudy235

Hey! my Alma Mater has produced a most distinguished Mathematician (and he is only 37!)

Originally Posted by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fields_Medal

The Fields Medal is a prize awarded to two, three, or four mathematicians under 40 years of age at the International Congress of the International Mathematical Union (IMU), a meeting that takes place every four years.

Emphasis mine. The "youth" of the awardee is an artifact of the selection criteria.

[rudy235]

Originally Posted by axn

Emphasis mine. The "youth" of the awardee is an artifact of the selection criteria.

The tradition follows a few great examples.

Evariste Galois a great mathematician resolved a 350 year old problem when he was in his teens, but died tragically at the tender age of 22.

The Norwegian Mathematician Niels Hendrik Abel also showed greatness at a very young age. Ramanujan only lived to 33.

So, I think that while bright mathematicians can certainly be "productive" at relatively "old ages" like 50-59 . most of the seminal work is conceived in their "early" years.

So paraphrasing the Silicon Valley Saying: The Fields medal Age requirement is a feature not a bug!

[CRGreathouse]

Originally Posted by rudy235

So, I think that while bright mathematicians can certainly be "productive" at relatively "old ages" like 50-59 . most of the seminal work is conceived in their "early" years.

I think that this may have been true once, but it doesn't seem to be the case now. Most fields of math take a lot of learning just to grasp the basics and major discoveries are now typically made by older mathematicians. Wiles was too old for a Fields when he proved FLT (they made a special prize for him instead, I think); similarly Mihăilescu was too old for a Fields when be proved Catalan's conjecture. Zhang was in his late 50s when he proved the bounded gap theorem. Babai was in his mid-60s when he proved his Graph Isomorphism result. Royen proved the Gaussian correlation inequality after he retired (story).

Originally Posted by rudy235

So paraphrasing the Silicon Valley Saying: The Fields medal Age requirement is a feature not a bug!

While not necessarily favoring the requirement, I agree that it's a feature of the Fields: it's to recognize and give incentive to young productive mathematicians who might not yet be well-known outside their circles, rather than to reward end-career mathematicians who would bask in the glory but perhaps not produce much further mathematics.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by CRGreathouse

Wiles was too old for a Fields when he proved FLT (they made a special prize for him instead, I think)

He was awarded the Wolfskehl Prize, bequeathed by Paul Wolfskehl, who died in 1906, to the first person to prove FLT. The original prize was 100,000 marks, which would have been worth £1,000,000; however, after the hyperinflation following WWI the prize's value had been reduced to a fraction of a cent. It apparently did subsequently recover some value, and in 1997 Wiles was awarded £30,000.

Wiles also received other awards for this achievement, but the Wolfskehl Prize is AFAIK the only one specifically created for the first prover of FLT.

Of course, when the Wolfskehl Prize was originally announced, it gave rise to a flood of nonsensical "proofs" by cranks.

[pinhodecarlos]

Originally Posted by rudy235

Upsetting the celebration, someone stole Birkar’s 14-karat gold medal after the awards ceremony. Organizers said they were cooperating with authorities to retrieve the prize.

This was the first time the congress has been held in Latin America.

Anyone mugged? That's Brazil at its best Hehe...



Congratulations to all.

[CRGreathouse]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

He was awarded the Wolfskehl Prize, bequeathed by Paul Wolfskehl, who died in 1906, to the first person to prove FLT. The original prize was 100,000 marks, which would have been worth £1,000,000; however, after the hyperinflation following WWI the prize's value had been reduced to a fraction of a cent. It apparently did subsequently recover some value, and in 1997 Wiles was awarded £30,000.

Wiles also received other awards for this achievement, but the Wolfskehl Prize is AFAIK the only one specifically created for the first prover of FLT.

I was thinking of the IMU silver plaque. I didn't know about the Wolfskehl Prize, that's neat!

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by CRGreathouse

I was thinking of the IMU silver plaque. I didn't know about the Wolfskehl Prize, that's neat!

Back atcha, I didn't know about the plaque!

The stolen medal was for a prof who came to the UK as an Iranian refugee.

Is John Bolton responsible? Too early to tell!
;-)

[GP2]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

Is John Bolton responsible? Too early to tell!
;-)

Blame it on Rio.