Gromov Receives 2009 Abel Prize . The Norwegian Academy of Science Medal (1997), and the Wolf Prize (1993). He is a and Letters has decided to award the foreign member of the U.S. National Academy of Abel Prize for 2009 to the Russian- Sciences and of the American Academy of Arts French mathematician Mikhail L. and Sciences, and a member of the Académie des Gromov for “his revolutionary con- Sciences of France. tributions to geometry”. The Abel Prize recognizes contributions of Citation http://www.abelprisen.no/en/ extraordinary depth and influence Geometry is one of the oldest fields of mathemat- to the mathematical sciences and ics; it has engaged the attention of great mathema- has been awarded annually since ticians through the centuries but has undergone Photo from from Photo 2003. It carries a cash award of revolutionary change during the last fifty years. Mikhail L. Gromov 6,000,000 Norwegian kroner (ap- Mikhail Gromov has led some of the most impor- proximately US$950,000). Gromov tant developments, producing profoundly original will receive the Abel Prize from His Majesty King general ideas, which have resulted in new perspec- Harald at an award ceremony in Oslo, Norway, on tives on geometry and other areas of mathematics. May 19, 2009. Riemannian geometry developed from the study Biographical Sketch of curved surfaces and their higher-dimensional analogues and has found applications, for in- Mikhail Leonidovich Gromov was born on Decem- stance, in the theory of general relativity. Gromov ber 23, 1943, in Boksitogorsk, USSR. He obtained played a decisive role in the creation of modern his master’s degree (1965) and his doctorate (1969) global Riemannian geometry. His solutions of from Leningrad University, where he also com- important problems in global geometry relied on pleted his postdoctoral thesis (1973). He was an new general concepts, such as the convergence of assistant professor at Leningrad University from Riemannian manifolds and a compactness prin- 1967 to 1974. ciple, which now bear his name. Since 1982 Gromov has been a permanent Gromov is one of the founders of the field of professor at the Institut des Hautes Études Sci- global symplectic geometry. Holomorphic curves entifiques, Bures-sur-Yvette, France. He has been a French citizen since 1992. He is currently also were known to be an important tool in the geom- Jay Gould Professor of Mathematics at the Cou- etry of complex manifolds. However, the environ- rant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York ment of integrable complex structures was too University. rigid. In a famous paper in 1985 he extended the Gromov has received many distinguished in- concept of holomorphic curves to J -holomorphic ternational awards, including the Kyoto Prize in curves on symplectic manifolds. This led to the Basic Sciences (2002), the Balzan Prize (1999), the theory of Gromov-Witten invariants, which is now AMS Leroy P. Steele Prize (1997), the Lobatchewski an extremely active subject linked to modern quantum field theory. It also led to the creation of 730 NOTICES OF THE AMS VOLUME 56, NUMBER 6 More on Gromov in the Notices For more on the work of Mikhail Gromov, see “Encounter with a geometer”, by Marcel Berger, which appeared in two parts in the February and March 2000 issues of the Notices. Journal of Hyperbolic One of Gromov’s celebrated discoveries is Equations (JHDE) described in “WHAT IS… a pseudoholomorphic Managing Editors curve?”, by Simon Donaldson, in the October Philippe G. LeFloch 2005 issue of the Notices. Université Pierre et Marie All Notices material going back to 1995 is Curie (Paris 6), France freely available online at http://www.ams. J-G Liu University of Maryland, org/notices. College Park, USA Abstracting/Indexing symplectic topology, and gradually penetrated and • Mathematical Reviews transformed many other areas of mathematics. • Zentralblatt MATH • Science Citation Index Expanded Print ISSN: 0219-8916 Gromov’s work on groups of polynomial growth (SciSearch®) Online ISSN: 1793-6993 introduced ideas that forever changed the way in • Current Contents®/Physical, Chemical Vol 6 • 4 Issues • 2009 which a discrete infinite group is viewed. Gromov and Earth Sciences • CompuMath Citation Index® discovered the geometry of discrete groups and • Journal Citation Reports/Science Edition solved several outstanding problems. His geo- • ISI Alerting Services metrical approach rendered complicated combina- www.worldscinet.com/JHDE torial arguments much more natural and powerful. Mikhail Gromov is always in pursuit of new Discrete Mathematics, questions and is constantly thinking of new ideas Algorithms and for solutions of old problems. He has produced Applications (DMAA) deep and original work throughout his career and remains remarkably creative. The work of Gromov Co-Editor-in-Chief will continue to be a source of inspiration for many Ding-Zhu Du future mathematical discoveries. University of Texas at Dallas, USA Jinlong Shu East China Normal University, About the Prize Shanghai, China The Niels Henrik Abel Memorial Fund was es- Aim & Scope tablished in 2002 to award the Abel Prize for The aim of this journal is to outstanding scientific work in the field of math- advance and promote the theory Print ISSN: 1793-8309 ematics. The prize is awarded by the Norwegian and applications of discrete Online ISSN: 1793-8317 mathematics, which is a research Academy of Science and Letters, and the choice of Vol 1 • 4 Issues • 2009 area in mathematics with applications Abel Laureate is based on the recommendation by in computer science, industrial the Abel Committee consisting of five internation- engineering, bio-informatics, chemistry and communication networks. ally recognized mathematicians. www.worldscinet.com/DMMA Previous recipients of the Abel Prize are: Jean- Pierre Serre (2003), Michael Atiyah and I. M. Singer (2004), Peter Lax (2005), Lennart Carleson (2006), Journal of Topology S. R. S. Varadhan (2007), and John G. Thompson and Analysis (JTA) and Jacques Tits (2008). Managing Editors —From Announcements of the Norwegian Shmuel Weinberger Academy of Science and Letters University of Chicago, USA Guoliang Yu Vanderbilt University, USA Aim & Scope This journal is devoted to topology and analysis, broadly defined to include, for instance, differential geometry, geometric topology, geometric analysis, geometric group Print ISSN: 1793-5253 theory, index theory, noncommutative Online ISSN: 1793-7167 geometry, and aspects of probability Vol 1 • 4 Issues • 2009 on discrete structures, and geometry of Banach spaces. www.worldscinet.com/JTA www.worldscientific.com JUNE/JULY 2009 NOTICES OF THE AMS 731.