Access
This article is part of Nature's premium content.
Published online 27 March 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.698
News
Mathematicians rewarded for decoding symmetry
Award goes to maths that tames wild shapes and houses the infinite.
The Abel Prize, generally considered the ‘Nobel’ of mathematics, has been won this year by two mathematicians whose work has helped to classify the building blocks of symmetry.
John Griggs Thompson of the University of Florida, Gainsville, and Jacques Tits of the Collège de France in Paris, France, have been given the prize, worth 6 million Norwegian kroner (US$1.
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).
Comments
Reader comments are usually moderated after posting. If you find something offensive or inappropriate, you can speed this process by clicking 'Report this comment' (or, if that doesn't work for you, email webadmin@nature.com). For more controversial topics, we reserve the right to moderate before comments are published.
I thought the Fields Medal was the "Nobel Prize of mathematics"!
I'd be curious to hear how this relates to the Poincare Conjecture and how it applies to tuning laser emission function and determining the stable points in nuclear harmonics of a reactor core. It would also seem to relate to mapping processes on the galactic scale and in particular with identifying segments of a starfield as unique symetries in the star field of choice. It might also have application in predicting chemical and biological states of a given model. It may also have genetics applications as a filter to work one's way through the forest to the rare genom with the most interesting features relating to the human condition(s). It could be used as a qualifier... a probabalistic tool to discover the range of probable/viable(?) models within a field of research. Then there is the matter of discovering a particular bit of NET traffic in the sea of NET activity quickly. One could choose a set of variables significant to a search and plot their movement through the whole of Net message traffic. A rule of symetry would identify the specific location of a particular elusive bit of information. Also this could be pertinent to the management of data produced by the newest kind of processors: molecular computers that use parallel processing.
Summerville, South Carolina, USA
I agree that Tits need more symmetry.