How Many Mathematicians Have Won Nobels? How many mathematicians have won Nobels? von Donald Saari With the awarding of the 2005 Nobel in Economics to Robert J. Aumann have come remarks that he and John Nash were the only mathematicians to have received Nobel Prizes. But there have been others. Bob Aumann was in the mathematics department breu’s mathematical tastes, but Debreu’s adoption of at Hebrew University for many years. After writing the Bourbaki formal writing style made many of his a couple of papers in algebraic topology (his the- books and papers very difficult to read. sis area), he became one of the movers and shakers Earlier, Leonid Kantorovich received the 1975 award in game theory. (Remember after Aumann received in Economics. He always was a mathematician; inde- his MIT Ph.D., he accepted a position at Princeton, ed, he was chair of the mathematics group in Novo- which at that time was deeply involved in that new sibirsk in Siberia and later a mathematics group in topic of game theory.) Indeed, I must wonder whether Moscow. His name is familiar from conformal map- the award was given to Bob this year to make up for pings, variational methods, functional analysis, etc. the serious mistake of not recognizing him at the sa- While John Bardeen (the only double Nobel winner me time as when Nash (also a Princeton mathematics in Physics) did not earn his Ph.D. in mathematics, Ph.D.) got his Nobel. he did his graduate work at Princeton in mathemati- There are several other examples of mathematicians cal physics. Much of his work involved mathematics. receiving the Nobel Prize. John Pople of Northwe- Moreover, John kept close ties to the mathematics stern University (my former academic home), who department at Urbana; e.g., he was chair of the 1979 was honored with the Chemistry Nobel in 1998, recei- committee to find a new chair for that department. ved his mathematics Ph.D. from Cambridge in partial If one wanted to count Nobel winners who used a si- differential equations. All of his research involved fin- gnificant amount of fairly sophisticated mathematics ding different approximations for the Navier-Stokes in their research, one probably would have close to equation and relating it to chemistry. Until his recent half of all Economics winners and several more from death, John always was very positive in his comments Chemistry and Physics (including Einstein). about the power and value of mathematics. There is a persistent rumor that the reason there is Another example is Herbert Hauptman, who received no Nobel in mathematics or astronomy is that, had the 1985 Nobel in Chemistry. Hauptman earned his there been one, Mittag-Leffler would have won. But, mathematics Ph.D. from Maryland with a dissertati- the story goes, the political problem in awarding such on “An N-dimensional Euclidean algorithm”. a prize to him was that Mittag-Leffler was having an Kenneth Arrow received the 1972 Nobel in Econo- affair with Nobel’s wife. mics. He earned his M.A. in mathematics from Co- When I was at Northwestern, one of my colleagues, lumbia, and much of his Ph.D. training was in stati- Alexandra Bellow (the well known ergodic theorist), stics and economics. Read his work; Arrow was stron- wasinSwedenwithherhusbandatthetime,Saul gly influenced by mathematics and he uses it skillful- Bellow, when he received his Nobel Prize in litera- ly! ture. So she checked out the story about Mittag- Another name is Gerard Debreu, who received the Leffler. When she returned she told me that there 1983 award in Economics. Debreu, who died in De- was a minor flaw in this story – Nobel never was cember 2004 and whose memory and research were married! recently recognized at a conference in Berkeley, recei- ved his doctorate in mathematics in France. Debreu Author’s address always kept strong ties to mathematics. For instance, Prof. Dr. Donald Saari I was told that in the late 1970s, Debreu and Ste- Department of Mathematics ve Smale played central roles in pulling mathematics 232 MPST and economics into the same building at Berkeley. University of California, Irvine During Debreu’s Ph.D. training, he was strongly in- California 92697-3875 fluenced by the Bourbaki school in France. It is easy USA to believe this: not only did this school fashion De- [email protected] DMV-Mitteilungen 14-1/2006 15.