Three cheers for Karen Uhlenbeck, the first woman to win the prestigious Abel maths award
Three cheers for Karen Uhlenbeck, the first woman to win the prestigious Abel maths award"
- Select a language for the TTS:
- UK English Female
- UK English Male
- US English Female
- US English Male
- Australian Female
- Australian Male
- Language selected: (auto detect) - EN
Play all audios:
When Alfred Nobel endowed his famous prizes, he omitted mathematics, a decision that seemed so extraordinary to mathematicians they lapped up false stories to account for it. One was the
idea that the Swedish mathematician Mittag-Leffler — a likely prize-winner — had had an affair with Nobel’s wife. This is nonsense. Nobel was unmarried and probably didn’t even know
Mittag-Leffler, who lived in Sweden while Nobel lived in Paris.
The absence of a great international prize for mathematics — despite it being the most international of subjects — caused discomfort, and in 1936 a Canadian mathematician created and funded
the Fields Medal, awarded every four years to two, three or four people. This averages less than one per year, making for fewer recipients than any of the Nobel Prizes, but the really big
difference is that you have to be under 40 to be eligible. Rather than an award for a lifetime’s achievement, usually true for the Nobel, you have to do seriously brilliant work relatively
young. The issue with the Fields medal is that the idea that mathematicians do their best work when young is a myth: many mathematicians develop later in life.
But in 2003 the problem was resolved. Shortly before his untimely death at age 26 in 1829, Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel had regretted the absence of an annual international
mathematics prize and nearly two hundred years later it finally came into being, awarded by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, and this year I attended the London broadcast of the
result from Norway.
The audience remained in the dark until the last minute, but when we found out the name I was delighted to find it was an ex-colleague, Karen Uhlenbeck. She was a lively presence at the
University of Illinois at Chicago where she had just been promoted to full professor when I joined its mathematics department. Although her work was far removed from my own, she was clearly
a person of wide ranging imagination who walked and talked in a direct manner, impervious to nonsense and kind to anyone who was serious about mathematics.
Brilliantly intuitive, she had the ability to divine what was going on without having it spelled out, a quality essential to any great mathematician. As one of her ex-students said, someone
who once came to her with a question got an answer that didn’t seem at all relevant. He went away dissatisfied, came back some days later with a differently phrased question and got the same
answer. But when he finally saw the way to handle the problem, he realised she had answered the question he should have asked.
Karen’s mathematical area was Analysis, which has its origins in Calculus and deals with such things as how small changes in one quantity affect other quantities. For example, finding the
shortest distance, or perhaps the quickest route, between two points given various obstructions and an uneven terrain. But it can also be extended to higher dimensions such as working out
the minimal area of a soap bubble trapped between wire loops. As a schoolgirl, she was fascinated by mathematics and physics, and later in her career was involved in the interplay between
the two. As discoveries by physicists started to impinge more directly on mathematical analysis in the 1980s, she helped lay the mathematical groundwork for some of the most exciting ideas
in quantum physics.
Despite her individual brilliance, Karen is a team player, and her Abel prize reflects a lifetime’s achievement; she flourished again in her mid-70s after recovering from illness. This well
deserved award is doubly appropriate as she became a great encourager of younger mathematicians and serves as a role model for female mathematicians — she is the first woman to win the
prize. As she once said of herself, if she had started five years earlier she would never have made it, but the year 1968 when she received her PhD was one of change, and women
mathematicians are now part of the fabric of university maths departments.
By proceeding, you agree to our Terms & Conditions and our Privacy Policy.
If an account exists for this email address, you will shortly receive an email from us. You will then need to:
Please note, this link will only be valid for 24 hours. If you do not receive our email, please check your Junk Mail folder and add [email protected] to your safe list.
Trending News
AK Antony treating a sensitive matter in insensitive manner: BJPJaswant Singh said Gen VK Singh was not not seeking extension of service for the prize of office but only rectification ...
Recipe: Hazelnut polenta bread puddingOur recipes, your kitchen: If you try any of the L.A. Times Test Kitchen recipes from this week’s Food section, please s...
30 arrested for running extortion gates on Meghalaya highwaysThe Meghalaya government has adopted a “zero tolerance policy” on the collection of toll, taxes and fees illegally by in...
Flinders in trading halt on court decisionAAPThe West Australian Shares in Flinders Mines have been placed in a trading halt pending the outcome of court action a...
Ebola orphans in west africa struggle to cope with lossesReporting from Unification City, Liberia — Suddenly, Hawa Kaifa has too many responsibilities. There are Antoinette and ...
Latests News
Three cheers for Karen Uhlenbeck, the first woman to win the prestigious Abel maths awardWhen Alfred Nobel endowed his famous prizes, he omitted mathematics, a decision that seemed so extraordinary to mathemat...
Edward D. Kissane was elected president of...L.A. Times Archives Dec. 1, 1987 12 AM PT Share via Close extra sharing options Email Facebook X LinkedIn Threads Reddit...
Haryana: two jammu and kashmir students thrashed 'for no reason', three accused arrestedTwo university students, residents of Jammu and Kashmir, were allegedly beaten up by some people in Haryana's Mahen...
Is the bbc misrepresenting climate change?The _Daily Mail_ and the rest of the right-wing press is having a jolly time highlighting how the BBC’s climate editor, ...
Irish eyes smile for cox plate triple treatMELBOURNEThe West Australian Approval of quarantine facilities at Ireland's Ballydoyle training facility has booste...