The Abel Prize: All winners at a glance

The Abel Prize is one of the most prestigious in mathematics and awarded annually by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. It is named after the Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel whose work was so groundbreaking that, according to the French mathematician Charles Hermite, it "left mathematicians enough to keep them busy for five hundred years." Abel was born in 1802 but died tragically young, at 26, from tuberculosis and in poverty.

We are excited to be going along to this year's Abel Prize ceremony. To celebrate we thought we'd gather together our articles covering the Abel Prize since it was first awarded in 2003, giving accessible information about the people and the maths. We also bring you some background information about the Prize from the Chair of the Abel Prize Committee, Helge Holden. We hope you enjoy the content!

The Abel Prize 2024: Michel Talagrand

Talagrand was rewarded for his ground breaking contributions to probability theory and functional analysis, with outstanding applications in mathematical physics and statistics.

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The Abel Prize 2021: László Lovász

The 2021 Abel Prize was shared by László Lovász and Avi Wigderson for their fundamental contributions to theoretical computer science and discrete mathematics, and their leading role in shaping them into central fields of modern mathematics. Find out about Lovász' work in this article.

The Abel Prize 2021: Avi Wigderson

The 2021 Abel Prize was shared by László Lovász and Avi Wigderson for their fundamental contributions to theoretical computer science and discrete mathematics, and their leading role in shaping them into central fields of modern mathematics. Find out about Wigdersons' work in this article.

Karen Keskulla Uhlenbeck

The Abel Prize 2019: Karen Uhlenbeck

Uhlenbeck was the first and so far only woman to be awarded an Abel Prize, for her pioneering work in geometry, analysis, mathematical physics and more.

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The Abel Prize 2013: Pierre Deligne

The Abel Prize 2013 went to Deligne for seminal contributions to algebraic geometry and for their transformative impact on number theory, representation theory, and related fields.

The Abel Prize 2005: Peter D. Lax

The 2005 Abel Prize went to Lax for his groundbreaking contributions to the theory and application of partial differential equations and to the computation of their solutions.

The Abel Prize 2004: Michael Atiyah and Isadore Singer

The 2004 Abel Prize was shared by Atiyah and Singer their discovery and proof of the index theorem, bringing together topology, geometry and analysis, and their outstanding role in building new bridges between mathematics and theoretical physics.

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The Abel Prize 2003: Jean-Pierre Serre

The very first Abel Prize was awarded to Jean-Pierre Serre for shaping the modern form of many parts of mathematics, including topology, algebraic geometry and number theory.

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