Abel Prize 2022 has been declared: All about this prestigious award
On 23rd March, the Abel Prize for the year 2022 was awarded to American mathematician Professor Dennis Parnell Sullivan by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. Sullivan was chosen as the winner from a long list of nominees for his breakthrough in the field of topology. He has developed a new way of understanding rational homotopy theory, a subfield of algebraic and geometric topology. Here’s everything one needs to know about this prestigious global award in the field of academia and research.
Who founded the Abel Prize?
The Abel prize was introduced by the Norwegian Parliament in the year 2002 on the auspicious occasion of the 200-year birth anniversary of Niels Henrik Abel, Norway’s all-time great mathematician. Since then, once every year, Abel prize is being conferred to world’s notable mathematicians and is now regarded as a leading honour in the field of mathematics.
Who confers the Abel Prize?
The Abel prize is awarded by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters on behalf of Norwegian Ministry of Education. The winner of this prestigious honour is selected by the Abel Committee that comprises of five top mathematicians from all across the globe.
What does the winner receive?
The Abel Prize winner receives a monetary amount of 7.5 million Norwegian Krone alongside a statuette of Niels Henrick Abel. The statuette is made out of glass by world-famous statue artist Henrik Haugan.
What are the other objectives of the Abel Committee?
Apart from selecting the annual winner of the Abel Prize, the Abel Committee also contributes immensely to the society by stimulating interest in mathematics and motivating the young generation to pursue the field. This includes organising global mathematics competitions for students of all classes as well as a prize allotted for the best mathematics teacher in the world.
Niels Henrik Abel: Life and works
Neils Henrik Abel was born in 1802 in Norway. He was a Norwegian mathematician and one of the forefathers of modern mathematics. His mathematical prowess came to the forefront during his early formative years when he could solve original mathematical problems with utmost precision that were way beyond his level.
Since his early youth, Abel immersed himself in extensive study of mathematical thesis and writings by notable mathematicians such as Sir Isaac Newton, Leonhard Euler, and even his own contemporaries, Joseph-Louis Lagrange and Carl Friedrich Gauss.
Abel published his first paper in 1823 on functional equations and integrals, that immediately took the mathematics world by storm. Three years later, he travelled to Paris, the then mathematics capital of the world where he interacted with world renowned mathematicians and even managed to finish his own paper on the theory of algebraic integrals.
His key contribution to the field of mathematics is known as Abel’s Theorem. It forms the foundation for Abelian integrals and Abelian functions that were later discovered and forms the core for solving mathematical functions with multiple variables.
During his very short lifetime (he died at the age of 26 from tuberculosis), he even discovered mathematical theories that were later used during the invention of CT scan. Abel theorem is also widely used today while encrypting data online, also known as ECC cryptography.