The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters announced today that it would award the 2009 Abel Prize to Mikhail L. Gromov, a French mathematician who was born in Russia and is affiliated with the Institute for Advanced Scientific Studies in Bures-sur-Yvette, France, and with New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. He will receive about $950,000 when the prize, known by some as mathematics’ equivalent of a Nobel Prize, is awarded in May.
Mr. Gromov, who is 65, is being honored for “his revolutionary contributions to geometry,” according to the Norwegian Academy’s citation. He has also won other high honors in mathematics, including the Kyoto Prize, in 2002, and the Wolf Prize, in 1993.
This is the third time in five years that a mathematician affiliated with NYU has won the Abel Prize. The others were S.R. Srinivasa Varadhan, in 2007, and Peter D. Lax, in 2005. —Andrew Mytelka
