Tate Receives 2010 Abel Prize The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters John Tate is a prime architect of this has awarded the Abel Prize for 2010 to John development. Torrence Tate, University of Texas at Austin, Tate’s 1950 thesis on Fourier analy- for “his vast and lasting impact on the theory of sis in number fields paved the way numbers.” The Abel Prize recognizes contributions for the modern theory of automor- of extraordinary depth and influence to the math- phic forms and their L-functions. ematical sciences and has been awarded annually He revolutionized global class field since 2003. It carries a cash award of 6,000,000 theory with Emil Artin, using novel Norwegian kroner (approximately US$1 million). techniques of group cohomology. John Tate received the Abel Prize from His Majesty With Jonathan Lubin, he recast local King Harald at an award ceremony in Oslo, Norway, class field theory by the ingenious on May 25, 2010. use of formal groups. Tate’s invention of rigid analytic spaces spawned the John Tate Biographical Sketch whole field of rigid analytic geometry. John Torrence Tate was born on March 13, 1925, He found a p-adic analogue of Hodge theory, now in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He received his B.A. in called Hodge-Tate theory, which has blossomed mathematics from Harvard University in 1946 and into another central technique of modern algebraic his Ph.D. in 1950 from Princeton University under number theory. the direction of Emil Artin. He was affiliated with A wealth of further essential mathematical ideas Princeton University from 1950 to 1953 and with and constructions were initiated by Tate, includ- Columbia University from 1953 to 1954. He joined ing Tate cohomology, the Tate duality theorem, the faculty of Harvard University in 1954 and Barsotti-Tate groups, the Tate motive, the Tate remained there for thirty-six years before joining module, Tate’s algorithm for elliptic curves, the the University of Texas, Austin. He retired from Néron-Tate height on Mordell-Weil groups of Texas in 2009. abelian varieties, Mumford-Tate groups, the Tate John Tate has received many distinguished in- isogeny theorem and the Honda-Tate theorem for ternational awards and honors. As early as 1956, abelian varieties over finite fields, Serre-Tate de- he was awarded the AMS Cole Prize for outstanding formation theory, Tate-Shafarevich groups, and the contributions to number theory, and he received Sato-Tate conjecture concerning families of elliptic the AMS Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement in curves. The list goes on and on. 1995. With Mikio Sato he received the 2002/2003 Many of the major lines of research in algebraic Wolf Prize in Mathematics for “his creation of fun- number theory and arithmetic geometry are only damental concepts in algebraic number theory.” possible because of the incisive contribution and He was an invited speaker at the International illuminating insight of John Tate. He has truly left Congress of Mathematicians in 1962 in Stockholm a conspicuous imprint on modern mathematics. and again in 1970 in Nice. He was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 1969, was named About the Prize a foreign member of the French Académie des Sci- The Niels Henrik Abel Memorial Fund was es- ences in 1992, and elected an honorary member of tablished in 2002 to award the Abel Prize for the London Mathematical Society in 1999. outstanding scientific work in the field of math- ematics. The prize is awarded by the Norwegian Citation Academy of Science and Letters, and the choice of Beyond the simple arithmetic of 1, 2, 3, … lies a Abel Laureate is based on the recommendation of complex and intricate world that has challenged the Abel Committee, which consists of five inter- some of the finest minds throughout history. This nationally recognized mathematicians. world stretches from the mysteries of the prime Previous recipients of the Abel Prize are: Jean- numbers to the way we store, transmit, and secure Pierre Serre (2003), Michael Atiyah and I. M. Singer information in modern computers. It is called (2004), Peter Lax (2005), Lennart Carleson (2006), the theory of numbers. Over the past century it S. R. S. Varadhan (2007), John G. Thompson and has grown into one of the most elaborate and Jacques Tits (2008), and Mikhail L. Gromov (2009). sophisticated branches of mathematics, interact- ing profoundly with other areas such as algebraic —From announcements of the Norwegian geometry and the theory of automorphic forms. Academy of Science and Letters JUNE/JULY 2010 NOTICES OF THE AMS 747.