Since 2003 · annual
Abel Prize. The closest thing to a Nobel for mathematics.
Established by the Norwegian government in 2001 and awarded since 2003 in explicit parallel to the Nobel Prize. Named after Niels Henrik Abel. Lifetime-achievement honour, cash prize comparable to the Nobel's.
- 2024
Michel Talagrand
French
Stochastic processes, measure concentration, high-dimensional geometry.
- 2023
Luis Caffarelli
Argentine-American
Nonlinear PDE and free-boundary problems.
- 2022
Dennis Sullivan
American
Topology and dynamical systems, rational homotopy theory.
- 2021
László Lovász · Avi Wigderson
Hungarian / Israeli-American
Theoretical computer science and discrete mathematics.
- 2020
Hillel Furstenberg · Gregory Margulis
Israeli-American / Russian-American
Ergodic theory, probability, group theory, combinatorics.
- 2019
Karen Uhlenbeck
American
Fundamental work in geometric analysis and gauge theory — particularly on minimal surfaces, Yang–Mills equations, and bubbling phenomena. The first woman to win the Abel Prize, five years after Mirzakhani became the first woman to win the Fields Medal.
- 2018
Robert Langlands
Canadian
The Langlands program connecting representation theory and number theory.
- 2017
Yves Meyer
French
Theory of wavelets.
- 2016
Andrew Wiles
British
Proof of Fermat's Last Theorem in 1994, via a special case of the modularity theorem for semistable elliptic curves. The result ended a 358-year-old problem that had defeated every previous mathematician. Too old for the Fields Medal (by one year) — the committee created a special plaque for him instead.
- 2015
John Nash · Louis Nirenberg
American / Canadian-American
Nonlinear PDE and its applications to geometric analysis. Nash's embedding theorems and the Nash–Moser iteration reshaped differential geometry. Nash had also won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 1994 for the equilibrium concept. Both he and his wife died in a car accident weeks after the Abel ceremony.
- 2014
Yakov Sinai
Russian-American
Dynamical systems, ergodic theory, mathematical physics.
- 2013
Pierre Deligne
Belgian
Algebraic geometry and its applications to number theory, representation theory, and related fields.
- 2012
Endre Szemerédi
Hungarian-American
Discrete mathematics and theoretical computer science; Szemerédi regularity lemma.
- 2011
John Milnor
American
Pioneering discoveries in topology, geometry, and algebra.
- 2010
John Tate
American
Vast and lasting impact on the theory of numbers.
- 2009
Mikhail Gromov
Russian-French
Revolutionary contributions to geometry.
- 2008
John Thompson · Jacques Tits
American / Belgian-French
Deep achievements in algebra, in particular for shaping modern group theory.
- 2007
S.R. Srinivasa Varadhan
Indian-American
Fundamental contributions to probability theory; unified theory of large deviations.
- 2006
Lennart Carleson
Swedish
Profound contributions to harmonic analysis and the theory of smooth dynamical systems.
- 2005
Peter Lax
Hungarian-American
Groundbreaking contributions to the theory and application of partial differential equations.
- 2004
Michael Atiyah · Isadore Singer
British / American
Discovery and proof of the index theorem — a result that equates the analytical index of an elliptic operator to a topological invariant of the underlying manifold. Unifies topology, geometry, and analysis; contains Riemann–Roch and the Hirzebruch signature theorem as special cases. Awarded 41 years after the original proof.
- 2003
Jean-Pierre Serre
French
Playing a key role in shaping the modern form of many parts of mathematics.