Abel Prize

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Abel Prize Winner

Gerd Faltings will be awarded this year’s Abel Prize—mathematics’ equivalent of the Nobel Prize—the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters revealed yesterday. The 71-year-old German mathematician is known for his 1983 proof helping to define arithmetic geometry. See his reaction here (w/video). Faltings gave the first proof for the “Mordell conjecture,” a 1922 theorem suggesting increasingly complex equations produce fewer rational solutions. The theorem was once considered unsolvable. However, Faltings found that if a curve’s equation has a variable raised to a power higher than 3, it will contain a finite number of integer or fraction coordinates. He did so by combining number theory and geometry as opposed to relying on the more traditional effort known as the Diophantine approximation approach.  Rational points have fascinated mathematicians since the time of ancient Greece; to this day, researchers seek to better understand them. Weeks ago, Chinese scientists posited an equation for the first hard limit on rational points in a curve.