Inaugural Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics Awarded

Five mathematicians have been selected as recipi- Terence Tao of the Univer- ents of the first Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics sity of California Los Angeles, by the Breakthrough Prize Foundation. was honored “for numerous Simon Donaldson of Stony Brook University breakthrough contributions and Imperial College London to harmonic analysis, combi- was honored “for the new natorics, partial differential revolutionary invariants of equations, and analytic num- 4-dimensional manifolds and ber theory.” for the study of the relation Richard Taylor of the between stability in algebraic Terence Tao Institute for Advanced Study geometry and in global dif- was recognized “for numer- ferential geometry, both for ous breakthrough results in bundles and for Fano variet- the theory of automorphic forms, including the Tani- Simon Donaldson ies.” Maxim Kontsevich of the yama-Weil conjecture, the Institut des Hautes Études local Langlands conjecture Scientifiques was recognized for general linear groups, and “for work making a deep the Sato-Tate conjecture.” impact in a vast variety of The Breakthrough Prize in mathematical disciplines, in- Mathematics was created by cluding algebraic geometry, Richard Taylor Mark Zuckerberg and Yuri deformation theory, sym- Milner in 2013. It aims to rec- plectic topology, homologi- ognize major advances in the field, to honor the cal algebra, and dynamical world’s best mathematicians, to support their Maxim Kontsevich systems.” future endeavors, and to communicate the excite- Jacob Lurie of Harvard ment of mathematics to the general public. The University was selected “for Breakthrough Prize carries a cash award of US$3 his work on the foundations million. of higher category theory and The prizewinners will serve on the selection committee responsible for choosing subsequent derived algebraic geometry; winners of the prize from the pool of contenders for the classification of fully nominated by the mathematics community. From extended topological quan- 2015 on, one Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics tum field theories; and for will be awarded every year. providing a moduli-theoretic interpretation of elliptic co- Jacob Lurie homology.”

Photo credits: Simon Donaldson–Imperial Col- lege, London; Maxim Kontsevich–MCV/IHES; Jacob Lurie–Harvard University Department of Math- ematics; Terence Tao–Photo by Kyle Alexander; DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1090/noti1157 Richard Taylor–Photo by Cliff Moore.

September 2014 Notices of the AMS 901