Robert Langlands, a Canadian giant of contemporary mathematics, has been declared this year’s winner of the Abel Prize endowed by the government of Norway. There is a weird rule of journalism that any major monetary prize for mathematical accomplishment must immediately be compared to a Nobel Prize. If there were a math Nobel, reporters could use it as a way to understand and easily convey a person’s importance and prestige. Mathematicians, who tend to live up to stereotype when it comes to unworldliness, are mostly comfortable with this situation. The “Langlands program” really is a research program, an ongoing one that keeps hundreds of people employed pursuing conjectures and filling in gaps: the name is not just jargon.

Source: National Post March 22, 2018 09:56 UTC