2014 Fields Medals announced

http://www.mathunion.org/general/prizes/2014

by johnb556677 • 12 years ago

308 74 12 years ago

mathunion.org

IvyMike2• 12 years ago

Notably, Maryam Mirzakhani is the first woman to win a Fields medal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryam_Mirzakhani

kiyoto• 12 years ago

Also notably,

1. Mirzakhani is the first Iranian 2. Bhargava is the first Canadian 3. Hairer is the first Austrian 4. Avila is the first Brazilian

titter• 12 years ago

Since there are still ~200 countries without a Fields Medal, this isn't mathematically remarkable in comparison to the parent point.

So, I understand instead that you're identifying this as notable for the following reason:

There are 100 times more women in the world than Canadians, yet women and Canadians have the same number of Fields Medals.

cylinder2• 12 years ago

Mirzakhani is the first woman to ever win, which is even more notable than being the first Iranian.

melling• 12 years ago

Well, as an undergrad, she went to one of the best universities in the world.

http://www.newsweek.com/surprising-success-irans-universitie...

We don't hear about it much, but Iran has one of the best universities in the world.

mehrdada2• 12 years ago

It's important to note that successful Iranians generally become successful _despite_ the country they grow up in, not because of it. In my opinion, and having first-hand experience with that environment, the credit for this incredible achievement belongs to her and herself only.

kaitai4• 12 years ago

I think Iran has a culture that respects mathematics and engineering and values accomplishments in those areas. Anecdotally/in my experience, there are many very good female Iranian mathematicians. (I guess I personally haven't met male Iranian mathematicians, only engineers; anecdote, as I said.)

boxyhendrix2• 12 years ago

Thank you for pointing that out. I hadn't actually noticed after glancing at the pictures that a woman was among the winners.

EDIT - I'm not trying to be funny, her hairstyle makes her look like she has a receding hairline so I thought she was a man.

boxyhendrix2• 12 years ago

Wow! I seem to have touched a nerve.

StandardFuture• 12 years ago

Hehe, I imagine Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī [0] would be very proud of her. :)

[0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu%E1%B8%A5ammad_ibn_M%C5%ABs%C...

WhitneyLand3• 12 years ago

>created an abstract theory of regularity structures for stochastic partial differential equations

Fairly obvious but whatever.

JK!

WhitneyLand3• 12 years ago

Why the down vote, not funny at all? Hey I would be in support of them all getting the same money as Nobel or Abel laureates :).

bwy• 12 years ago

Sorry WhitneyLand. In case you haven't noticed, the one thing Hacker News is most afraid of is becoming anything like Reddit.

comatose_kid• 12 years ago

Amazing group of people. Manjul is my wife's cousin so I have heard of a few examples of his brilliance (like the time he corrected his mom, a Math prof, during one of her lectures - he was a middle-schooler at the time).

Here's a nice piece NPR did on him: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4111253

S4M4• 12 years ago

The more I read HN, the more I am impressed by the diversity of its readers. Now we have the cousin of a field medalist, nothing less!

27182818284• 12 years ago

You should see one of my all-time favorite Hacker news threads:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079

ekm2• 12 years ago

'Manjul Bhargava completed all of his high school math and computer courses by age 14.[..] Princeton hired him at the rank of tenured full professor within only two years of finishing graduate school, which is considered a record in the Ivy League.'

Fascinating. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manjul_Bhargava

judk2• 12 years ago

Most of the undergraduate math majors finished high school math by age 14. Manjul was a cut above even them in mathematical talent and experience.

idlewords• 12 years ago

Some of this stuff is pretty abstruse. Can someone rephrase the winners' research programs in the form of Harry Potter fanfic?

digital55• 12 years ago

In-depth profiles and videos about all 4 Fields medalists here: http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140812-a-brazilian-...

nraynaud2• 12 years ago

Haha, "But Khot’s Unique Games Conjecture has already amply proven its value, even should it ultimately be disproven. It has cast a bright light on previously dim areas of computational complexity and provided critical insight — and, yes, Khot has also used it to prove major results, ones that stand regardless of its truth."

weak people conjecture and then get results "if my conjecture stands". This guy is a black belt, he makes a conjecture, gets a field medal for it, and then removes it from his proof ("just joking, it works wether it's true or not").

Still gets the medal for the now useless conjecture and not for the ultimate proof.

sanj2• 12 years ago

My world got a little smaller. Khot's advisor -- Sanjeev Arora -- was the guy who cemented my decision of where to go to school.

cycrutchfield2• 12 years ago

Nice humblebrag, bro

cycrutchfield2• 12 years ago

"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."

Strange that you feel the need to comment on a topic that you appear to know absolutely nothing about.

nraynaud2• 12 years ago

Whereas a personal attack is a demonstration of knowledge and wisdom.

Q6T46nT668w6i3m• 12 years ago

Martin Hairer is a OS X developer and the author of the fantastic Amadeus multi-track audio editor.

http://www.hairersoft.com

Cyph0n• 12 years ago

I'm sorry, what? A Fields medalist AND a OS X dev. I...

bsaul• 12 years ago

I suppose that when you're working on Field medal awarding problems, building software seems like a way to relax your mind.

That's a technique i tried when i was bulding my latest "complex" algorithm (graph diffing with the graph stored in a sql db): Whenever i felt stuck, i went and took an online lesson in quantum mechanics ( susskin ones, the best).

All of the sudden, all my problems seemed really easy, and i was able to move forward almost right away.

johnb556677• 12 years ago

The Nevanlinna Prize was also awarded. This is the award mathematicians give to theoretical computer scientists. This year the winner is Subhash Khot from NYU. His main result is the Unique Games Conjecture (UGC) and how it can be used to obtain hardness of approximation results for algorithmic problems. For example, it is used to show that MaxCut cannot be approximated better than a factor of 0.878.. unless UGC does not hold. Remarkably this exact approximation factor is achievable by the breakthrough SDP algorithm of Goemans and Williamson. It is not currently clear if UGC is true and the opinions of theoreticians are split.

netvarun• 12 years ago

Quanta Magazine, published by the Simons Fonundation, has an article on each of the four Fields Medallists and the Nevanlinna Prize winner, Subhash Khot.

Artur Avila - A Brazilian Wunderkind Who Calms Chaos http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140812-a-brazilian-...

Manjul Bhargava - The Musical, Magical Number Theorist http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140812-the-musical-...

Martin Hairer - In Noisy Equations, One Who Heard Music http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140808-in-mathemati...

Maryam Mirzakhani - A Tenacious Explorer of Abstract Surfaces http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140812-a-tenacious-...

Subhash Khot - A Grand Vision for the Impossible http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140812-a-grand-visi...

triplesec• 12 years ago

Oh, this is great: I'd only seen the one for Dr Mirzahani. Truly inspirational. I wish I'd had these role model stories as a high schooler!

javipas• 12 years ago

Strange to see this precisely today.

I can't help seeing this and remember once more Robin Williams (RIP) in 'Good Will Hunting', where I first knew about the Field Medal and the magic of Maths was a recurring theme in that fantastic movie.

gear54rus• 12 years ago

"... Former winners include Nobel laureates, Field's medal winners, renowned astrophysicists and lowly M.I.T. Professors"

R.I.P. Robin Williams

mhartl4• 12 years ago

I was in the same Harvard class as Manjul Bhargava, one of this year's Fields Medal winners. I remember having lunch with him as a freshman and being amazed that he was already taking Math 134 (topology). I slowly realized he'd effectively taken a full undergraduate math curriculum in high school.

I had a friend who was Manjul's TA for a probability class our senior year. I still remember him exclaiming, "There's no way that series telescoped!" [1] when Manjul solved one problem in a particularly clever way.

The strange thing is that it was hard to tell at first if Manjul was particularly smart. Two of our other mathematically accomplished classmates, Lenny Ng and Kiran Kedlaya (both of whom I knew much better than Manjul), were obviously brilliant, but with Manjul it took a lot longer to figure out he was a genius.

I think now the secret is out.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telescoping_series

S4M4• 12 years ago

I had a friend who was Manjul's TA for a probability class our senior year. I still remember him exclaiming, "There's no way that series telescoped!" [1] when Manjul solved one problem in a particularly clever way.

By any chance, can you remember that problem? I have no way to understand Manjul Bhargava's work that got him the Nobel prize, but I could probably understand how he solved that problem, which would enable me to perceive a slight bit of his genius.

mhartl4• 12 years ago

Alas, I don't remember the details of the particular sum.

mathgeek777• 12 years ago

I'm a current Duke student and took multivariable calculus taught by none other than Lenny Ng a year ago. I had no idea who he really was until about halfway through, though we all knew he was brilliant. One of the nicest professors I've ever had, exceptional at explaining concepts too. He also draws pictures like a god, something that's obviously really beneficial in that sort of class. He used to say his drawings were a bit off while we would just sit there astonished. Such an amazing guy.

mhartl4• 12 years ago

Lenny was one of my lab partners in Physics 15c. It was especially cool since I'd read about him in Newsweek the year before. Really smart, super nice guy.

burkaman• 12 years ago

Is it just me, or are the winners not listed anywhere on this site? It says "The Prize Committees for ICM 2014 have begun their work." And "last updated: 2014-07-30" at the bottom. Was the page reverted to an older version for some reason?

S4M4• 12 years ago

The winners were listed yesterday, then I noticed they removed the list, but now it's back.

kaitai4• 12 years ago

They accidentally released the names early, then pulled them. I heard @JSEllenberg tweeted the results right away, but they were supposed to be released after the ceremony.

alexyes• 12 years ago

A pity only very few people in the world can fully understand the beauty of the mathematical proofs these geniuses created

mhartl4• 12 years ago

It is weird. Doing great mathematics is like writing great poetry in a language only a few hundred people can read. And yet, every once in a while a mathematical poem changes the world.

lutusp• 12 years ago

Yes, and it's often the case that, faced with such a "poem", the world changes without ever understanding the mechanism of the change, as with both relativity and quantum theories.

srom• 12 years ago

Cedric Villani (Fields Medal 2010) wrote a book about his work [1] where he tries to give the reader a hint of what it looks like to be a mathematician on a day to day basis. It's quite interesting, even though he does not try to explain his theory.

[1] http://www.amazon.fr/Théorème-vivant-Cédric-Villani/dp/22467...

Mz• 12 years ago

frrp• 12 years ago

Those are beautiful stories of truth exploration!

2014 Fields Medals announced

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