Andrei Okounkov
Photo courtesy of Andrei Okounkov
Princeton's Andrei Okounkov has received one of this year's Fields
Medals, widely considered to be the math world's equivalent of the
Nobel Prize. The awards for outstanding mathematical achievement were
presented earlier today (Aug. 22) at the opening ceremony of the
International Congress of Mathematicians in Madrid.
Okounkov, a professor of mathematics
at Princeton since 2002, has been
lauded for his ability to find connections between seemingly unrelated
fields, such as algebraic geometry in mathematics and statistical
mechanics in physics. Andrew Wiles, chair of the mathematics
department, said his colleague has a talent for bridging far-flung
topics in math.
"One of his greatest strengths is his amazing versatility," Wiles said. "He works in many different fields of mathematics and succeeds in taking results from one area and applying them in a seemingly quite different field."
Another colleague, Peter Sarnak, said that Okounkov has made breakthrough contributions in a number of fields.
"I would characterize Okounkov as being a very powerful,
sophisticated and fast thinker who also has great combinatorial talent
and problem-solving skills," said Sarnak, also a professor of
mathematics. "This combination is rather unusual."
This year's other winners are Terence Tao of the University of
California-Los Angeles, who received his doctorate in mathematics at
Princeton in 1996, and Wendelin Werner of the University of Paris-Sud.
Famously reclusive Russian mathematician Grigory Perelman also was
named a winner, but has declined to accept his award.
Fields Medals are awarded every four years to mathematicians no older
than 40, and two to four mathematicians can receive them each time they
are presented. Canadian mathematician John Charles Fields created the
medals, which were first awarded in 1936. Along with a gold medallion
inscribed with the winner's name, the awards bring a cash prize of
about $13,300.
Okounkov, who was born in Moscow in 1969, received his bachelor's
degree and doctorate in mathematics from Moscow State University, and
was awarded a Sloan Research Fellowship in 2000. Okounkov also has
taught at the University of Chicago and the University of
California-Berkeley. He has been a member of the Institute for Advanced
Study in Princeton and the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in
Berkeley, and has been a research fellow in the Dobrushin Mathematical
Laboratory at the Institute for Problems of Information Transmission at
the Russian Academy of Sciences.
