On May 20, 2025 the Abel Prize will be presented to this year's winner at the University of Oslo. The 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!
What is the Abel Prize? — Find about the history and motivation of the Prize with Chair of the Abel Prize committee Helge Holden in this article. You can also listen a podcast featuring Holden.
The Abel Prize 2025: Masaki Kashiwara — Kashiwara got the prize for contributions to algebraic analysis and representation theory.
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.
The Abel Prize 2023: Luis A. Caffarelli — Caffarelli won an Abel for his work on the mathematics of change.
The Abel Prize 2022: Dennis Sullivan — Sullivan won the Prize for work on a variety of topics, including dynamical systems.
The Abel Prize 2021: László Lovász and 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. You can find our more about the work of Lovász here and the work of Wigderson here.
The Abel Prize 2020: Hillel Furstenberg and Gregory Margulis — The 2020 Abel Prize was shared by Hillel Furstenberg and Gregory Margulis for pioneering the use of methods from probability and dynamics in group theory, number theory and combinatorics.
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.
The Abel Prize 2018: Robert Langlands — Langlands was awarded an Abel Prize for a visionary programme that bridges previously unconnected areas of mathematics.
The Abel Prize 2017: Yves Meyer — Meyer was honoured in 2027 for the development of an incredibly powerful mathematical tool: wavelet theory.
The Abel Prize 2016: Andrew Wiles — The 2016 Abel Prize went to Wiles for a proof that implied Fermat's very famous last theorem.
The Abel Prize 2015: John Nash and Louis Nirenberg — The 2015 Abel Prize was shared by John Nash and Louis Nirenberg for striking contributions to the theory of nonlinear partial differential equations and its applications to geometric analysis.
The Abel Prize 2014: Yakov G. Sinai — Sinai was awarded an Abel for his ability to see order in chaos.
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 2012: Endre Szemerédi — Szemerédi got the prize for fundamental contributions to discrete mathematics and theoretical computer science.
The Abel Prize 2011: John Milnor — The Abel Prize 2011 went to Milnor for pioneering discoveries in topology, geometry and algebra.
The Abel Prize 2010: John T. Tate — Tate was awarded an Abel Prize for his vast and lasting impact on the theory of numbers.
The Abel Prize 2009: Mikhail Gromov — The Abel Prize 2009 went to Gromov for his revolutionary contributions to geometry.
The Abel Prize 2008: John Griggs Thompson and Jacques Tits — John Griggs Thompson and Jacques Tits received the honour in 2008 for their profound achievements in algebra and for shaping modern group theory.
The Abel Prize 2007: Srinivasa S. R. Varadhan — The 2007 Prize went to Varadhan for fundamental contributions to probability theory and in for creating a unified theory of large deviation.
The Abel Prize 2006: Lennart Carleson — Carleson was rewarded for his profound and seminal contributions to harmonic analysis and the theory of smooth dynamical systems.
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.
The Abel Prize 2003: Jean-Pierre Serre — The very first Abel Prize was awarded to Serre for shaping the modern form of many parts of mathematics, including topology, algebraic geometry and number theory.