Fields Medals awarded at the ICM2006:
Okounkov, Perelman, Tao and Werner

• The winners of the Fields Medals awarded today, 22nd of August, in Madrid, during the opening ceremony of the International Congress of Mathematicians ICM2006, are: Andrei Okounkov; Grigori Perelman; Terence Tao; and Wendelin Werner.
• The Nevanlinna Prize is awarded to Jon Kleinberg.

The Gauss Prize goes to Kiyoshi Itô (Please see separate press release for the Gauss Prize.)

Fields Medals ICM2006

Andrei Okounkov: "for his contributions bridging probability, representation
theory and algebraic geometry"

The work of Andrei Okounkov has revealed profound new connections between different areas of mathematics and has brought new insights into problems arising in physics. Although his work is difficult to classify because it touches on such a variety of areas, two clear themes are the use of notions of randomness and of classical ideas from representation theory. This combination has proven powerful in attacking problems from algebraic geometry and statistical mechanics. (Further inxxxxation at www.icm2006.org)

Andrei Okounkov was born in 1969 in Moscow. He received his doctorate in mathematics from Moscow State University in 1995. He is a professor of mathematics at Princeton University. He has also held positions at the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the University of Chicago, and the University of California, Berkeley. His distinctions include a Sloan Research Fellowship (2000), a Packard Fellowship (2001), and the European Mathematical Society Prize (2004).

Contact: Enrico Arbarello, ea@mat.uniroma1.it, +39 3386397112

Grigori Perelman: "for his contributions to geometry and his revolutionary insights into the analytical and geometric structure of the Ricci flow"

The name of Grigori Perelman is practically a household word among the scientifically interested public. His work from 2002-2003 brought ground-breaking insights into the study of evolution equations and their singularities. Most significantly, his results provide a way of resolving two outstanding problems in topology: the Poincare Conjecture and the Thurston Geometrization Conjecture. As of the summer of 2006, the mathematical community is still in the process of checking his work to ensure that it is entirely correct and that the conjectures have been proved. After more than three years of intense scrutiny, top experts have encountered no serious problems in the work (Further inxxxxation at www.icm2006.org)

Grigori Perelman was born in 1966 in what was then the Soviet Union. He received his doctorate from St. Petersburg State University. During the 1990s he spent time in the United States, including as a Miller Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. He was for some years a researcher in the St. Petersburg Department of the Steklov Institute of Mathematics. In 1994, he was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Zurich.


Terence Tao: "for his contributions to partial differential equations, combinatorics, harmonic analysis and additive number theory".

Terence Tao is a supreme problem-solver whose spectacular work has had an impact across several mathematical areas. He combines sheer technical power, an other-worldly ingenuity for hitting upon new ideas, and a startlingly natural point of view that leaves other mathematicians wondering, "Why didn't anyone see that before?". His interests range over a wide swath of mathematics, including harmonic analysis, nonlinear partial differential equations, and combinatorics. (Further inxxxxation at www.icm2006.org)

Terence Tao was born in Adelaide, Australia, in 1975. He received his PhD in mathematics in 1996 from Princeton University. He is a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Los Angeles. Among his distinctions are a Sloan Foundation Fellowship, a Packard Foundation Fellowship, and a Clay Mathematics Institute Prize Fellowship. He was awarded the Salem Prize (2000), the American Mathematical Society (AMS) Bocher Prize (2002), and the AMS Conant Prize (2005, jointly with Allen Knutson). At 31 years of age, Tao has written over 80 research papers, with over 30 collaborators.

Contact: Charles Fefferman, cf@Math.Princeton.EDU


Wendelin Werner: “for his contributions to the development of stochastic Loewner evolution, the geometry of two-dimensional Brownian motion, and conxxxxal field theory".

The work of Wendelin Werner and his collaborators represents one of the most exciting and fruitful interactions between mathematics and physics in recent times. Werner's research has developed a new conceptual framework for understanding critical phenomena arising in physical systems and has brought new geometric insights that were missing before. The theoretical ideas arising in this work, which combines probability theory and ideas from classical complex analysis, have had an important impact in both mathematics and physics and have potential connections to a wide variety of applications. (Further inxxxxation at www.icm2006.org)

Born in 1968 in Germany, Wendelin Werner is of French nationality. He received his PhD at the University of Paris VI in 1993. He has been professor of mathematics at the University of Paris-Sud in Orsay since 1997. From 2001 to 2006, he was also a member of the Institut Universitaire de France, and since 2005 he has been seconded part-time to the Ecole Normale Supèrieure in Paris. Among his distinctions are the Rollo Davidson Prize (1998), the European Mathematical Society Prize (2000), the Fermat Prize (2001), the Jacques Herbrand Prize (2003), the Loève Prize (2005) and the Pólya Prize (2006).

Contact: Charles Newman, newman@courant.nyu.edu

Nevanlinna Prize to Jon Kleinberg

Jon Kleinberg's work has brought theoretical insights to bear on important practical questions that have become central to understanding and managing our increasingly networked world. He has worked in a wide range of areas, from network analysis and routing, to data mining, to comparative genomics and protein structure analysis. In addition to making fundamental contributions to research, Kleinberg has thought deeply about the impact of technology, in social, economic, and political spheres. (Further inxxxxation at www.icm2006.org)

Jon Kleinberg was born in 1971 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. He received his Ph.D. in 1996 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a professor of computer science at Cornell University. Among his distinctions are a Sloan Foundation Fellowship (1997), a Packard Foundation Fellowship (1999), and the Initiatives in Research Award of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (2001). In 2005, Kleinberg received a MacArthur "genius" Fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Contact: John Hopcroft, jeh@cs.cornell.edu

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5274040.stm

Maths genius declines top prize

Grigory Perelman, the Russian who seems to have solved one of the hardest problems in mathematics, has declined one of the top prizes in maths.
The Fields Medals are among the most important prizes for mathematics, and Perelman was to have picked up the award at a ceremony in Madrid.

However, the organisers told the BBC that Perelman had declined the prize.

In 2002, Perelman claimed to have solved a century-old problem called the Poincare Conjecture.

So far, experts combing through his proof in order to verify it have found no significant errors.

"The official statement regarding Grigory Perelman is that he has declined to accept the medal," said a spokesperson for the International Congress of Mathematicians, which organised the meeting at which the prizes were announced.

There had been considerable speculation that Grigory "Grisha" Perelman would decline the award. The Russian has been described as an "unconventional" and "reclusive" genius who spurns self-promotion.

The Fields Medals are regarded as the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for mathematics. They are awarded to mathematicians under the age of 40 for an outstanding body of work and are decided by an anonymous committee.

The winners are Andrei Okounkov of the University of California, Berkeley, Terence Tao from the University of California, Los Angeles, and Wendelin Werner of the University of Paris-Sud in Orsay, France.

Mr Perelman was born in Leningrad (St Petersburg) 1966 in what was then the Soviet Union. Aged 16, he won the top prize at the International Mathematical Olympiad in Budapest in 1982.

Having received his doctorate from St Petersburg State University, he taught at various US universities during the 1990s before returning home to take up a post at the Steklov Mathematics Institute.

He resigned from the institute suddenly on January 1, and has reportedly been unemployed since.

Perelman's gained international in 2002 and 2003 when he published two papers online that appeared to solve the Poincare Conjecture.

The riddle had perplexed mathematicians since it was first posited by Frenchman Henri Poincare in 1904.

Andrei Okounkov的得奖实在是出乎人的意料，至少是大大出乎我的意料。