Fields Medal

The Fields Medal is a prize awarded to two, three, or four mathematicians under 40 years of age at the International Congress of the International Mathematical Union (IMU), a meeting that takes place every four years. The Fields Medal is regarded as one of the highest honors a mathematician can receive, and has been described as the mathematician's Nobel Prize , although there are several key differences, including frequency of award, number of awards, and age limits. According to the annual Academic Excellence Survey by ARWU, the Fields Medal is consistently regarded as the top award in the field of mathematics worldwide, and in another reputation survey conducted by IREG in 2013-14, the Fields Medal came closely after the Abel Prize as the second most prestigious international award in mathematics. The prize comes with a monetary award which, since 2006, has been CA$15,000. The name of the award is in honour of Canadian mathematician John Charles Fields. Fields was instrumental in establishing the award, designing the medal itself, and funding the monetary component. The medal was first awarded in 1936 to Finnish mathematician Lars Ahlfors and American mathematician Jesse Douglas, and it has been awarded every four years since 1950. Its purpose is to give recognition and support to younger mathematical researchers who have made major contributions. In 2014, the Iranian mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani became the first female Fields Medalist. In all, sixty people have been awarded the Fields Medal. The most recent group of Fields Medalists received their awards on 1 August 2018 at the opening ceremony of the IMU International Congress, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The medal belonging to one of the four joint winners, Caucher Birkar, was stolen shortly after the event. The ICM presented Birkar with a replacement medal a few days later. The Fields Medal has for a long time been regarded as the most prestigious award in the field of mathematics and is often described as the Nobel Prize of Mathematics. Unlike the Nobel Prize, the Fields Medal is only awarded every four years. The Fields Medal also has an age limit: a recipient must be under age 40 on 1 January of the year in which the medal is awarded. This is similar to restrictions applicable to the Clark Medal in economics. The under-40 rule is based on Fields's desire that 'while it was in recognition of work already done, it was at the same time intended to be an encouragement for further achievement on the part of the recipients and a stimulus to renewed effort on the part of others.' Moreover, an individual can only be awarded one Fields Medal; laureates are ineligible to be awarded future medals. This is in contrast with the Nobel Prize which has been awarded to an individual or an entity more than once, whether in the same category (John Bardeen and Frederick Sanger), or in different categories (Marie Curie and Linus Pauling). The monetary award is much lower than the 8,000,000 Swedish kronor (roughly 1,400,000 Canadian dollars) given with each Nobel prize as of 2014. Other major awards in mathematics, such as the Abel Prize and the Chern Medal, have larger monetary prizes compared to the Fields Medal. The medal was first awarded in 1936 to the Finnish mathematician Lars Ahlfors and the American mathematician Jesse Douglas, and it has been awarded every four years since 1950. Its purpose is to give recognition and support to younger mathematical researchers who have made major contributions.