With last week’s announcements of the 2024 Nobel Prize winners, I wanted to dedicate an article to the major accolades that honor achievements and contributions in mathematics. While Alfred Nobel did not deem mathematics worthy of a prize (boo!), mathematical honors sometimes carry even greater rewards and have targeted accomplishments from specific groups of mathematicians.
The first of these is the Abel Prize, named after Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel and often dubbed the “Nobel Prize in Mathematics.” Like the Nobel Prize, the idea to begin this fellow Scandinavian accolade was formulated at the turn of the 20th century. Unfortunately, it struggled for a century to achieve proper funding, but starting in 2003, the government of Norway officially provided the money to give out an annual prize worth 6 million Norwegian kroner (around 500,000 USD). The prize now carries a payout of 7.5 million kroner (just under 700,000 USD), traditionally given to one or two mathematicians. The next Abel awards ceremony is May 20, 2025, so mark your calendars to celebrate the next winner or pair of winners!
While the Abel Prize has typically honored established mathematicians, the Fields Medal is exclusively given to mathematicians under the age of 40 for breakout early careers in the subject. It is named after Canadian mathematician John Charles Fields and is chosen by the International Mathematical Union every four years. The most recent medals were given to four outstanding 30-something mathematicians in 2022. Many Fields Medalists are fellow New Jersey residents working at Princeton University. The first two women recipients of the Medal are Maryam Mirzakhani, an Iranian mathematician who is sadly no longer with us after losing a battle with breast cancer, and Maryna Viazovska, originally from Ukraine.
The above two awards have traditionally honored what is often referred to as “pure mathematics” research: one can think of this as the more abstract mathematics, studied primarily to advance mathematical knowledge, with real-world applications put on the back burner (although one can often find applications without looking too hard!). High accolades with a more applied mathematics focus are the Norbert Wiener Prize and the International Prize in Statistics. One may even count the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics as a math-adjacent award: John Nash, famous for his work in game theory, notched both a Nobel Economics Prize and Abel Prize in his lifetime.
If you’re curious about the most lucrative mathematics award, this is probably the Millennium Prize, given by the Clay Institute of Mathematics, if you can solve one of its six so-called Millennium Problems in Mathematics. You might be familiar with some of these famously challenging problems — including P vs. NP, the existence of smooth solutions to the three-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations, and the Riemann Hypothesis. If you find a solution, the Clay Institute will award you one million USD!
It may be extremely difficult to win any of these prizes, but it’s always exciting to dream big. If you would like a taste of more challenging mathematics puzzles and problems in a fun environment, I will end this article with a plug to the Stevens Math Club, which meets on Wednesdays from 3 to 4:30 p.m. to prepare for the annual Putnam Competition, a test that features wildly challenging yet fascinating math problems. If you are interested, you can reach out to Professor Pavel Dubovski and stop by a meeting to start your journey to win a major mathematics award!
