Robert Langlands Wins the 2018 Abel Prize
The prize is one of the highest honors in mathematics
TORONTO, March , 2017
The winner of the 2018 Abel Prize is Robert Langlands, emeritus professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. The prize, which is modeled on the Nobel Prize, is one of the highest honors in mathematics. Langlands is a Canadian-born mathematician and the founder of the Langlands program. The Langlands program connects two areas of mathematics: number theory, which studies the relationships between numbers, and analysis, which is an advanced form of calculus. The connection between the two will help mathematicians investigate questions and find answers about the properties of prime numbers.
Langlands first wrote of his vision for the program in 1967, in a letter to the famed mathematician André Weil. He started the 17 page letter with the modest line: “If you are willing to read it as pure speculation, I would appreciate that,” he wrote. “If not — I am sure you have a waste basket handy.” Since that time, many mathematicians have worked on furthering his vision. His program reaches into many different fields and has been described by the Russian-American mathematician Edward Frenkel as “a kind of grand unified theory of mathematics.” James Arthur, a mathematician at the University of Toronto and former student of Langlands’ said, “It’s revolutionary, I think, as far as the history of mathematics is concerned.”