Belgian receives ‘Mathematics Nobel’

Belgian mathematician Pierre Deligne yesterday received the Abel Prize, unofficially known as the Nobel Prize for Mathematics, from King Harald V of Norway at an award ceremony at the University Aula in Oslo, the organisation’s website reports. The Abel Prize, which carries a cash award of around €800,000, is awarded annually by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. The president of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, Kirsti Strøm Bull, gave the opening speech. The academy awarded the prize to Deligne, of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey, “for seminal contributions to algebraic geometry and for their transformative impact on number theory, representation theory, and related fields”. Next stop for Deligne is the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim where he will meet children trying to solve mathematical problems, give a lecture to students and be the guest of honour at a banquet hosted by university rector Torbjørn Digernes. The week of celebrations will close with a symposium in Deligne’s honour at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on May 24.