The award, which is called the Nobel Prize in Mathematics, will be presented to the American Karen Uhlenbeck
The Norwegian Academy of Sciences has awarded the 2019 Abel Prize to Karen Uhlenbeck, Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, “for her pioneering achievements in geometric PDE theory, gauge invariance theory and integrable systems, and for her fundamental contributions to analysis, geometry and mathematics. physics in general”: https://argoprep.com/blog/k8/go-math-grade-7-vs-argoprep-grade-7/. It was decided to present this award to a woman for the first time in 17 years of the existence of the award.
Along with the Fields Medal, the Abel Prize is often referred to as the Nobel Prize in Mathematics. The award was founded by the government of Norway in 2002, the first prize was presented in 2003. All 16 previous award winners have been men. Among them are the famous mathematicians John Nash (also the 1994 Nobel laureate in economics) and Andrew Wiles, who proved Fermat’s Last Theorem, as well as our former compatriots Jacob Sinai and Mikhail Gromov.
The fact that Karen Uhlenbeck has become the new Abelian laureate, the Norwegian Academy of Sciences announced today, March 19. The prize itself, the cash equivalent of which is six million Norwegian kroner (more than 45 million rubles), will be presented by King Harald V of Norway on May 21 in Oslo.
Karen Uhlenbeck was born in Cleveland (Ohio, USA) in 1942. She graduated from the University of Michigan in 1964. Initially, Karen, inspired by the books of Fred Hoyle and Georgy Gamow, planned to study physics and what is multiples, but later switched to mathematics.
Uhlenbeck’s research interests are nonlinear partial differential equations, differential geometry, calculus of variations, topological quantum field theory and the theory of integrable systems. During her scientific career, she developed the tools and methods of analysis that every geometer and analyst now uses, according to a press release from the award. Her work also lays the foundations for modern geometric models in mathematics and physics. Another area of research in which Uhlenbeck worked
was gauge invariance theory. It is used in theoretical physics and https://argoprep.com/blog/k8/cause-and-effect-examples/ in particular for the mathematical understanding of models in particle physics, string theory, and general relativity.
“Her theories have revolutionized our understanding of minimal surfaces, such as those that form bubbles, and more general minimization problems,” said Hans Munte-Kas, chairman of the Abel Committee that determines the winner. In addition to him, the committee also includes Irene Fonseca (Carnegie Mellon University), Alice Chan Sun-Yun (Princeton University), Gil Kalai (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) and François Laboury (University of Nice).
Karen Uhlenbeck is known not only as a scientist, but also as a supporter of gender equality. In particular, she was one of the co-founders of the Women and Mathematics (WAM) program. The goal of this program is to overcome the imbalance between women and men studying mathematics.
Last year, Canadian Robert Langlands received the award “for creating a visionary program linking representation theory with number theory.”