The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters has awarded the Abel Prize for 2007 to the Indian American mathematician Srinivasa S.R. Varadhan. The prize will be presented to Mr Varadhan by HM King Harald in Oslo on 22 May.
27/03/2007 :: Mr Varadhan was awarded the prize “for his fundamental contributions to probability theory and in particular for creating a unified theory of large deviation”.
“Varadhan’s work has great conceptual strength and ageless beauty. His ideas have been hugely influential and will continue to stimulate further research for a long time,” says Kristian Seip, head of the international Abel Committee.
The Abel Committee states that Mr Varadhan, who is based at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences in New York, has provided “a unifying and efficient method for clarifying a rich variety of phenomena arising in complex stochastic systems” through his theory of large deviations. It also notes that the theory can be applied in many different fields, including quantum field theory, statistical physics, population dynamics, econometrics and finance, and traffic engineering.
The Abel Prize, which includes prize money of NOK 6 million (EUR 750 000), is awarded for outstanding mathematical achievement, and is often spoken of as the Nobel Prize of mathematics. The prize, which was awarded for the first time in 2003, was instituted in memory of the Norwegian mathematician Nils Henrik Abel (1802–1829), who despite his short life left an enduring mathematical legacy.
The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs