First Israeli, first Vietnamese win Fields Medal

[mike r]

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jFXhDUwxvQ4J9lvMsRqjYkIr2ndw

Child of Vietnam war wins top maths honour
By P.S. Jayaram (AFP)

HYDERABAD, India — Vietnamese-born mathematician Ngo Bao Chau on Thursday won the maths world's version of a Nobel Prize, the Fields Medal, cementing a journey that has taken him from war-torn Hanoi to the pages of Time magazine. Ngo, 38, was awarded his medal in a ceremony at the International Congress of Mathematicians meeting in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad. The other three recipients were Israeli mathematician Elon Lindenstrauss, Frenchman Cedric Villani and Swiss-based Russian Stanislav Smirnov.

Ngo, who was born in Hanoi in 1972 in the waning years of the Vietnam war, was cited for his "brilliant proof" of a 30-year-old mathematical conundrum known as the Fundamental Lemma. The proof offered a key stepping stone to establishing and exploring a revolutionary theory put forward in 1979 by Canadian-American mathematician Robert Langlands that connected two branches of mathematics called number theory and group theory. Ngo's achievement was brought to wider public recognition by its inclusion in Time magazine's list of the top 10 scientific discoveries of 2009. "It's as if people were working on the far side of the river waiting for someone to throw this bridge across," Peter Sarnak, a number theorist at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, said of Ngo's breakthrough. "And now all of sudden everyone's work on the other side of the river has been proven," Sarnak said...

The only son of a physicist father and a mother who was a medical doctor, Ngo's mathematical abilities won him a place, aged 15, in a specialist class of the Vietnam National University High School. In 1988, he won a gold medal at the 29th International Mathematical Olympiad and repeated the same feat the following year. After high school, he was offered a scholarship by the French government to study in Paris. He obtained a PhD from the Universite Paris-Sud in 1997 and became a professor there in 2005. Earlier this year he became a naturalised French citizen and accepted a professorship at the University of Chicago...

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http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000582933&fid=1725

Israeli mathematician wins Fields Medal
Elon Lindenstrauss is the first Israel to win the honor, which is considered the Nobel Prize of mathematics.
Globes' correspondent

Mathematician Prof. Elon Lindenstrauss of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has won the prestigious Fields Medal for 2010, the first Israeli to win the honor. The Fields Medal is considered the Nobel Prize of mathematics. Lindenstrauss, 40, won the Fields Medal for his work on numbers theory. The Fields Medal is awarded every four years to mathematicians under the age of 40, with the goal of encouraging them to make extraordinary achievements. Lindenstrauss will win a C$15,000 prize, a rather small amount in comparison with the $1 million Noble Prize awards.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Prof. Lindenstrauss honored the people and State of Israel: "This is a great achievement both for yourself and the State of Israel and we are proud of you." Prof. Lindenstrauss told Prime Minister Netanyahu of the many temptations around the world for leading Israeli lecturers and of his desire to stay at the Hebrew University in spite of them.

Elon Lindenstrauss was born in Jerusalem in 1970 to Naomi and Yoram Lindenstrauss, a mathematician and winner of the Israel Prize for Mathematics. At 18, Elon Lindenstrauss represented Israel at the International Mathematics Olympics, where he won the Bronze Medal. His IDF service was spent at the Air Force Talpiot Program. Elon Lindenstrauss has a B.Sc. in Mathematics and Physics, an M.Sc. and a Ph.D. in Mathematics all from the Hebrew University. He has been a Member at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, an assistant professor at Stanford University, and visiting member at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences...

[dimbear]

1. Congrats to those honored, of course!

Two quirks of the Fields: to receive it you must be younger than 40 years, (hardly fair), and it is chintzy at a mere $15k.

Hardly the equivalent of the Nobel, ummm?