Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters awards Belgian mathematician Pierre Deligne with Abel prize of 2013
Thursday, March 21, 2013
The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters awarded Belgian mathematician Pierre Deligne with Abel prize of 2013 for his contributions toward shaping algebraic geometry. The award includes a 6 million Norwegian kroner (US$1,026,000, €793,000) prize. Timothy Gowers, a mathematician from Cambridge University, announced the award in Oslo yesterday.
The Academy gave the award to Deligne for "seminal contributions to algebraic geometry and for their transformative impact on number theory, representation theory, and related fields".
For example, in 1974, Pierre Deligne did a mathematical proof of fourth Weil conjecture, one of properties of Riemann zeta function. This concept is related to analysis of the prime-counting function and the currently unsolved Riemann’s hypothesis. During the proof of the Weil conjecture, a concept of l-adic cohomology was introduced.
Pierre Deligne said, "The nice thing about mathematics is doing mathematics. The prizes come in addition".
Sources
- Philip Ball and Nature magazine. "Belgian Mathematician Wins Abel Prize for Shaping Algebraic Geometry" — Scientific Amerian, March 20, 2013
- Jacob Aron. "Shapely algebra breakthrough wins million-dollar prize" — New Scientist, March 20, 2013