TORONTO. August 3, 2018 - The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences extends its congratulations to this year’s Fields Medal recipients, Caucher Birkar, Alessio Figalli, Akshay Venkatesh, and Peter Scholze.

At a beautiful ceremony held at the opening of the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in Rio de Janeiro on August 1, four researchers were presented with the highest honour in mathematics. Awarded only every four years to a maximum of four exceptional mathematicians under age 40, the Fields Medal is considered by many as the “Nobel Prize of Mathematics.” The winners of the Fields Medal are selected by a group of renowned specialists nominated by the Executive Committee of the International Mathematical Union (IMU), which organizes the ICMs.

“These notable researchers are being duly recognized for their outstanding achievements in mathematics”, said Ian Hambleton, Director of the Fields Institute, who looks forward to following their continued success and to inviting them to the Fields Medal Symposium in Toronto.

Since 2012 the Fields Institute has had the honour of hosting a Fields Medallist at the annual Fields Medal Symposium in Toronto. The purpose of the Symposium is to recognize the work of the latest recipients of the Fields Medal, to bring together brilliant researchers to take the honoree’s research area to new frontiers, to raise public awareness of mathematics and the Fields Medal, and to inspire the next generation of researchers.

This year’s Fields Medal Symposium in November will honour the achievements of the late Maryam Mirzakhani, who was awarded a Fields Medal in 2014 for her outstanding contributions to the dynamics and geometry of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces.

The Fields Medal was founded through the efforts of John Charles Fields, a Canadian mathematician who had a major impact on mathematics at the national and international levels. Apart from founding the award that would eventually (and unofficially!) bear his name, Fields was a passionate advocate for mathematics and research and was determined to raise the status of mathematics. For this reason, the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences was named after him at its founding in 1992.

The Fields Institute continues to promote John Charles Fields’ vision of the international role of mathematics in connecting researchers, academics, students and the public. We are delighted to congratulate the winners of this year’s medals.

About the winners of the Fields Medal 2018:

Caucher Birkar was awarded a Fields Medal just a month after his 40th birthday for his substantial contributions to the world of algebraic geometry. Born in 1978 in a Kurdish village in Iran, he went on to graduate from the University of Tehran before seeking political asylum in the UK and pursuing a PhD in mathematics at the University of Nottingham.

His thesis, “Topics in modern algebraic geometry”, reinvigorated the field and is dedicated to his brother Haidar, “whose curiosity led [him] to the world of mathematics.” Since then, he has become a professor at the University of Cambridge and his work has revolutionized birational geometry, especially his development of the minimal model program (MMP) and his proof of boundedness of Fano varieties.

Alessio Figalli was awarded a Fields Medal for his work in calculating variations and partial differential equations. His results have profound implications for meteorology and the study of crystalline structure, but are also beautiful in their own right. His excellence in this field has been well-recognized, and this was not his first time on the stage of the ICM. He spoke in 2014 on quantitative stability results, not knowing that he would return to the ICM stage four years later to receive the Fields Medal.

Currently a professor at ETH Zurich, his academic path has taken him all over the world, from completing a full undergraduate degree in two years in Pisa, to studying under Fields Medal laureate Cédric Villani in Lyon, to working in Paris at the Ecole Polytechnique and the French National Centre for Scientific Research, to the University of Texas at Austin.

Akshay Venkatesh was awarded a Fields Medal for his outstanding contributions to number theory and related topics, such as Theory of Representation, Ergodic Theory, and Automorphic Forms. One marked feature of Venkatesh’s contributions to mathematics is their breadth. The IMU’s citation marvels that he has “solved many longstanding problems by combining methods from seemingly unrelated areas, presented novel viewpoints on classical problems, and produced strikingly far-reaching conjectures.”

He was born in New Delhi, India in 1981, and raised in Australia. His mathematical journey started in earnest at age 12, when he won medals at the International Mathematical Olympiad. This catapulted him to begin a bachelor’s degree in math and physics at the University of Western Australia at age 13. By age 20, he had graduated with a PhD from Princeton University and started teaching at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has subsequently worked at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University, Stanford University, and as this year will become a faculty member at the Institute for Advanced Study. His ability to dive into new fields and provide deep insights continues to astound

Peter Scholze is awarded a Fields Medal for his contributions to the field of arithmetic algebraic geometry. At age 30, he is one of the youngest mathematicians to win this prestigious prize. His work, cited by the IMU as transformative for his field, is exceptional and he is rightly considered to be one of the most influential mathematicians in the world.

Born in Dresden, Germany and raised in Berlin, Scholze has risen quickly in the mathematics world. As a graduate student at the University of Bonn, he gained notoriety for simplifying a complex mathematical proof in number theory from 288 to 37 pages. Shortly after completing his PhD in 2012, he became a full professor in Bonn at the age of 24 and the youngest in Germany to hold such a position.

History of the Fields Medal

Fields conceived of the award in the late 1920s, but it took until 1932 for the award to be established and funded. Officially, the award was meant to be called the International Medal for Outstanding Discoveries in Mathematics, free from any recognition of John Charles Fields himself. But, by the time the medal was first awarded in 1936, Fields had passed away, and it had become known by the wider public as the Fields Medal.

Fields had stipulated the prize was to be awarded for what had been already accomplished, but it was also “intended to be an encouragement for further achievement on the part of the recipients and a stimulus to renewed effort on the part of others.” The ICM later placed an age limit of 40 years of age in order to help encourage younger mathematicians in their careers. The award comes with $15,000 CAD from a fund that is administered by the University of Toronto. The prize is bestowed every four years, and there can be two, three, or four winners.

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