IATE Term of the week: Fields Medal

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The Fields Medal is considered the mathematicians’ unofficial Nobel Prize, which has no category for mathematics. It has been awarded since 1936 to two, three, or four mathematicians under 40 years of age at the International Congress of the International Mathematical Union (IMU) every four years. The colloquial name is taken in honour of Canadian mathematician John Charles Fields from the University of Toronto. In 2014, Maryam Mirzakhani became the first Iranian and first woman to win the Fields Medal. In the same year, Artur Avila was the first South American and Manjul Bhargava – the first person of Indian origins to win the Fields Medal. The next medals has been awarded at the opening ceremony of this year’s congress on the 1st of August.

The winners of the prize, presented this year at the International Congress of the International Mathematical Union in Rio de Janeiro were Prof Caucher Birkar, 40, from Cambridge University, Prof Akshay Venkatesh, 36, an Australian based at Princeton and Stanford in the US, Prof Alessio Figalli, 34, from ETH in Zurich and Prof Peter Scholze, 30, from Bonn University. Among the winners is a former refugee Caucher Birkar. He grew up on a farm near the Kurdish city of Marivan (Iran) and spoke little English when he began his PhD. As well as the medal, each recipient receives prize money of 15,000 Canadian dollars (about 10.000 €).

The Fields Medal is awarded to recognize outstanding mathematical achievement for existing work and for the promise of future achievement.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References:

https://www.mathunion.org/imu-awards/fields-medal/fields-medals-2018

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/aug/01/former-refugee-among-winners-of-fields-medal-the-nobel-prize-for-maths

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-00513-8

https://www.theguardian.com/science/alexs-adventures-in-numberland/2014/aug/13/fields-medals-2014-maths-avila-bhargava-hairer-mirzakhani


Written by Olga Koreneva. She was born in 1974 in Moscow. She was educated bilingually (German-Russian) and studied economics in Germany (FH Giessen-Friedberg) and Spain (Universidad de Extremadura/Badajoz). She lives in Spain and works as economist and translator since 2000. During the Bachelor´s and Master´s Translations studies from the University of Granada, she became a member of the University of Granada’s Terminology research group, Lexicon. She works as legal translator (certified translator) for German-Spanish and also as technical and specialised translator, interpreter, and terminologist for Russian, English, Italian and Portuguese for the humanitarian organisations and in the private sector. She also works as a language teacher. She possesses a PhD in Translation/Terminology (Subject: Psycholinguistic experimental study of Russian-Spanish terms) and has published articles about terminology and linguistics studies.