[Turkmath:2853] Tebrikler. Barış Kendirli

[Baris Kendirli]

 SCIENCE <https://www.nytimes.com/section/science>Robert P. Langlands Is
Awarded the Abel Prize, a Top Math Honor

By KENNETH CHANG <https://www.nytimes.com/by/kenneth-chang>MARCH 20, 2018
Continue reading the main story
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/20/science/robert-langlands-abel-prize-mathematics.html?hpw&rref=science&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well#story-continues-1>Share
This Page

   - Share
   - Tweet
   - Email
   - More
   - Save

Photo
Robert P. Langlands, professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study
in Princeton, N.J., speaking in the fall of 2016 at a conference centered
around his work. CreditDan Komoda/Institute for Advanced Study

In 1967, Robert P. Langlands set out a road map to prove a “grand unified
theory” that would tie together disparate areas of mathematics.

The conjectures of Dr. Langlands, now 81 and an emeritus professor at the
Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., have proven fertile ground
for mathematical advances in the past half-century. And although his
suppositions remain far from fully proven, the Norwegian Academy of Science
and Letters announced on Tuesday that Dr. Langlands was this year’s winner
of the Abel Prize <http://www.abelprize.no/>, which many view as a Nobel
Prize of mathematics.

“He’s a visionary,” said Sun-Yung Alice Chang, a mathematician at Princeton
University who served on the five-member prize committee. The panel
reviewed more than 100 candidates before selecting Dr. Langlands, Dr. Chang
said.

There is no Nobel Prize in mathematics. (Contrary to myth, that is not
because of an affair between a mathematician and Alfred Nobel’s wife. For
one, Nobel never married.)

For decades, the most prestigious math awards were the Fields Medals, but
they are limited to mathematicians 40 years or younger, to recognize the
promise of future discoveries as well as work already accomplished. The
Fields medals are also only given out every four years.

The Abel Prize, first awarded in 2003, honors a lifetime of mathematical
work and influence. It is named after Niels Hendrik Abel, a Norwegian
mathematician. Previous winners include Andrew J. Wiles, a mathematician
now at the University of Oxford who proved Fermat’s Last Theorem
<https://www.nytimes.com/1995/01/31/science/how-a-gap-in-the-fermat-proof-was-bridged.html>
; Peter D. Lax
<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/29/science/from-budapest-to-los-alamos-a-life-in-mathematics.html>
 of New York University; and John F. Nash Jr.
<https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/25/science/john-nash-a-beautiful-mind-subject-and-nobel-winner-dies-at-86.html>,
whose life was portrayed in the movie “A Beautiful Mind.”

In an interview in 2010
<https://www.math.ubc.ca/Dept/Newsletters/Robert_Langlands_interview_2010.pdf>,
Dr. Langlands, who was born in New Westminster, Canada, near Vancouver,
recalled that even though he skipped a grade, he had no intention of going
to college until a teacher “took up an hour of class time to explain to me,
in the presence of all the other students, that it would be a betrayal of
God-given talents for me not to attend university.”

At the age of 16, he enrolled at the University of British Columbia, and he
later pursued his doctoral studies at Yale.
MORE REPORTING ON MATHEMATICS

   -
   Marina Ratner, Émigré Mathematician Who Found Midlife Acclaim, Dies
at 78JULY
   26, 2017
   <https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/25/science/marina-ratner-dead-mathematician.html?module=Promotron&region=Body&action=click&pgtype=article>
   -
   Maryam Mirzakhani, Only Woman to Win a Fields Medal, Dies at 40JULY 16,
   2017
   <https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/16/us/maryam-mirzakhani-dead.html?module=Promotron&region=Body&action=click&pgtype=article>
   -
   New Biggest Prime Number = 2 to the 74 Mil ... Uh, It’s BigJAN. 22, 2016
   <http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/22/science/new-biggest-prime-number-mersenne-primes.html?module=Promotron&region=Body&action=click&pgtype=article>
   -
   Square Root of Kids’ Math Anxiety: Their Parents’ HelpAUG. 24, 2015
   <http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/08/24/square-root-of-kids-math-anxiety-their-parents-help/?module=Promotron&region=Body&action=click&pgtype=article>

As a professor at Princeton, Dr. Langlands started investigating ideas that
connected the mathematics of integers with a generalization of the theory
of periodic functions. Periodic functions are repeating patterns like the
undulations of a sine wave in trigonometry. More than two centuries ago,
mathematicians developed a method called Fourier analysis for describing,
for example, the vibrations of a guitar string as the combination of
multiple sine waves.

Dr. Langlands made use of this type of analysis in curved spaces of higher
dimensions (that is, more than the three dimensions of the world we live
in) to address fundamental problems in the theory of numbers.

In 1967, Dr. Langlands spoke with André Weil, a prominent French
mathematician then at the nearby Institute for Advanced Study, who told him
to put his thoughts in writing.

The result was 17 pages, handwritten. “After I wrote it I realized there
was hardly a statement in it of which I was certain,” Dr. Langlands wrote
apologetically. “If you are willing to read it as pure speculation I would
appreciate that; if not — I am sure you have a wastebasket handy.”
Photo
First page of the handwritten 1967 letter from Prof. Langlands to Prof.
Weil.CreditShelby White and Leon Levy Archives Center, Institute for
Advanced Study

Dr. Weil had the letter typed up, and it circulated among other
mathematicians, becoming what was known as the “Langlands program.” Dr.
Langlands proved a few pieces of it; others have solved additional special
cases.

Dr. Langlands’s work, for instance, served as one of the starting points in
the proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem by Dr. Wiles of Oxford. Pierre de
Fermat, a 17th century French mathematician, had asserted that equations of
the form *an* + *b*n = *cn*, where *a*, *b*, *c *and *n *are integers, have
no solutions when *n *is greater than two.

“He never got a Fields medal,” said Peter C. Sarnak, a mathematician at the
institute said of Dr. Langlands. “But many people have got Fields Medals
for settling special cases of his conjectures, relying on his tools to
start off.”
NThe Abel committee contacted Dr. Sarnak a few days ago as a sort of spy to
check that Dr. Langlands would be around to receive the news on Monday
morning, a day before the official announcement. “It seems like they do
this kind of detective work, I guess,” Dr. Sarnak said.

Even though the conjectures have not been proven in general, Dr. Sarnak was
sure they would be eventually. “There’s no question about the truth,” he
said. “It’s so intellectually compelling, it cannot not be true. God would
never make the world in which that was not true.”

King Harald V of Norway is to present the prize, accompanied by $764,000,
to Dr. Langlands at a ceremony in Oslo on May 22.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://yunus.listweb.bilkent.edu.tr/pipermail/turkmath/attachments/20180321/20736104/attachment-0001.html>