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The Fields Medal is a prize awarded to up to four mathematicians not over forty years of age at each International Congress of the International Mathematical Union, which meets once every four years. Founded at the behest of Canadian mathematician John Charles Fields, the medal was first awarded in 1936 and has been regularly awarded since 1950. Its purpose is to give recognition and support to young mathematical researchers who have made important contributions.

The Fields Medal is often described as the "Nobel Prize of mathematics". The comparison is not very accurate, in particular because the age limit is applied strictly. Moreover, Fields Medals have generally been awarded for a body of work, rather than for a particular result.

Laureates

Unusual circumstances

In 1978, Gregori Margulis, due to restrictions placed on him by the Soviet government, was unable to travel to the congress in Helsinki to receive his medal. The award was accepted on his behalf by Jacques Tits, who said in his address:
I cannot but express my deep disappointment - no doubt shared by many people here - in the absence of Margulis from this ceremony. In view of the symbolic meaning of this city of Helsinki, I had indeed grounds to hope that I would have a chance at last to meet a mathematician whom I know only through his work and for whom I have the greatest respect and admiration.*

In 1982, the congress was to be held in Warsaw, Poland but had to be moved to the next year, due to political instability. The awards were announced at the ninth General Assembly of the IMU earlier in the year and awarded at the 1983 Warsaw congress.

In 1998, at the ICM, Andrew Wiles was presented by the chair of the Fields Medal Committee, Yuri Manin, with the first-ever IMU silver plaque in recognition of his proof of Fermat's last theorem. Accounts of this award frequently make reference that at the time of the award Wiles was over the age limit for the Fields medal, e.g. see He was thought to be a favorite to win the medal in 1994, but a gap (later resolved by Wiles) in the proof was found in 1993. [http://www.ams.org/featurecolumn/archive/wiles.html Don Zagier described the IMU plaque as "a quantized Fields Medal".

The Fields Medal in popular culture

In the 1997 film Good Will Hunting, fictional MIT professor Gerald Lambeau (played by Stellan Skarsgård) is described as having been awarded a Fields Medal for his work in combinatorial mathematics.

In the film A Beautiful Mind, John Forbes Nash (played by Russell Crowe) complains about not winning the Fields Medal, along with not being the only one on the cover of Fortune Magazine.

See also

External links

Prizes | Mathematics awards

Medalla Fields | Fields-Medaille | Medalla Fields | Medalo Fields | جایزه فیلدز | Médaille Fields | 필즈상 | Medaglia Fields | מדליית פילדס | Fields-érem | Фильдсийн медаль | Fields-medaille | フィールズ賞 | Fieldsmedaljen | Medal Fieldsa | Medalha Fields | Medalia Fields | Филдсовская премия | Fieldsova medalja | Fieldsin mitali | Fieldsmedaljen | 菲尔兹奖

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Fields Medal".

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