Dear all,
The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters has decided to award the Abel
Prize for 2020 to Hillel Furstenberg, Hebrew University of Jerusalem,
Israel and Gregory Margulis, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA “for
pioneering the use of methods from probability and dynamics in group
theory, number theory and combinatorics”
Hillel Furstenberg and Gregory Margulis invented random walk techniques to
investigate mathematical objects such as groups and graphs, and in so doing
introduced probabilistic methods to solve many open problems in group
theory, number theory, combinatorics and graph theory. A random walk is a
path consisting of a succession of random steps, and the study of random
walks is a central branch of probability theory.
“The works of Furstenberg and Margulis have demonstrated the effectiveness
of crossing boundaries between separate mathematical disciplines and
brought down the traditional wall between pure and applied mathematics,”
says Hans Munthe-Kaas, chair of the Abel committee.
He continues: “Furstenberg and Margulis stunned the mathematical world by
their ingenious use of probabilistic methods and random walks to solve deep
problems in diverse areas of mathematics. This has opened up a wealth of
new results, such as the existence of long arithmetic progressions of prime
numbers, understanding the structure of lattices in Lie groups, and the
construction of expander graphs with applications to communication
technology and computer science, to mention a few.”
Hillel Furstenberg
Hillel Furstenberg was born in Berlin in 1935. His family was Jewish and
they managed to flee from Nazi Germany to the U.S. in 1939. Sadly, his
father did not survive the journey, and Furstenberg grew up with his mother
and sister in an orthodox community in New York.
When he published one of his early papers, a rumor circulated that he was
not an individual but instead a pseudonym for a group of mathematicians.
The paper contained ideas from so many different areas, surely it could not
possibly be the work of one man? Following a career in mathematics at
several universities in the U.S., he left the country in 1965 for the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he stayed until his retirement in
2003. Spending most of his career in Israel, he helped establish the
country as a world center for mathematics. Furstenberg has won the Israel
Prize and the Wolf Prize.
Gregory Margulis
Gregory Margulis was born in Moscow in 1946. From early on he showed a
unique talent in mathematics. In 1978, he won the Fields Medal at only 32
years old but was unable to receive the medal in Helsinki since the Soviet
authorities refused him a visa.
He was one of the top young mathematicians in the Soviet Union but was
unable to find a job at Moscow University as he faced discrimination for
being of Jewish origin. Instead, he found work at the Institute for
Problems in Information Transmission. He was only allowed to travel abroad
in 1979 when Soviet academics were given more personal freedoms. During the
1980s he visited academic institutions in Europe and the U.S. before
settling at Yale in 1991, where he has been ever since.
Margulis is a winner of the Lobachevsky Prize and the Wolf Prize.
Due to the ten years age difference and the travel restrictions of the
Soviet authorities, the laureates did not formally collaborate, however,
they influenced each other’s work.
Mvh. / Yours sincerely,
Torgeir Fjeld <https://torgeirfjeld.com/>
~~ ereignis <https://ereignis.no/>: taking you to who you are ~~
