Pierre Deligne Wins Abel Prize For Contributions To Algebraic Geometry 55
ananyo writes "Belgian mathematician Pierre Deligne completed the work for which he became celebrated nearly four decades ago, but that fertile contribution to number theory has now earned him the Abel Prize, one of the most prestigious awards in mathematics. The prize is worth 6 million Norwegian krone (about US$1 million). In short, Deligne proved one of the four Weil conjectures (he proved the hardest; his mentor, Alexander Grothendieck, had proved the second conjecture in 1965) and went on to tools such as l-adic cohomology to extend algebraic geometry and to relate it to other areas of maths. 'To some extent, I feel that this money belongs to mathematics, not to me,' Deligne said, via webcast."
I suspect this comment was on purpose (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why so much later?? (Score:4, Funny)
To encourage others. Even if it can't now be used for research there will at least be some people saying "Oh, so being a mathematician is a path to becoming a millionaire".
That will encourage some kids and uni/college students. It's an attempt to try and do something about the divide in society between the recognition given to sports stars, celebrities, manufactured pop stars, and other overly glamorised non-contributors to the human race who generally get lavished in riches for nothing other than being a fucking idiot publicly and the people who do actually contribute like scientists.
There's still a long way to go because you'll still get paid way more for nothing other than the ability to kick a ball around a field effectively than you will for curing cancer, inventing the world wide web, or sending people to the moon and robots to Mars, but at least it's an attempt at doing something about the problem of western society where idiocy is valued far more greatly than intelligence and competence.
Re: I suspect this comment was on purpose (Score:2, Funny)
Math humor is the best humor.
I don't know about that. I often find it has the power to divide a room.
Deligne is a huge mathematician, but (Score:4, Funny)
Deligne is a huge mathematician, but :
- Grothendieck give Deligne a lot of unpublished things, to be published;
- Deligne use it, but never publish it,
- Deligne made everything to hide it, and to let others think Grothendieck was fool.
Deligne use (for his only use) the tools given by Grothendieck, but hide and destroyed the spirit of it.
Even without this awful things he does, Deligne is on of the very big mathematician.
But mathematics lose a lot in this malversations.