The 2009 Abel Prize Ceremony

摘要

On 19 May this year the 2009 Abel Prize was presented to Mikhail Gromov by King Harald of Norway at a ceremony in Oslo. Gromov is a Permanent Professor at Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques in France and Jay Gould Professor at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences in New York. The prize was awarded for 'his revolutionary contributions to geometry'. I was there because of my membership of the Abel Prize Committee which is responsible for making the recommendation to The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. The Abel Prize has only existed since 2002, the two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Niels Hendrik Abel, but already it is regarded as the premier international career prize in the mathematical sciences and generally referred to in the media as the Nobel Prize of mathematics. Further information about the history of the prize can be found on the official website, http://www.abelprisen.no/en/.