The Nobel Prizes are prizes awarded annually to people (and, in the case of the Peace Prize, to organizations) who have completed outstanding research, invented ground-breaking techniques or equipment, or made an outstanding contribution to society in physics, chemistry, literature, peace, medicine or physiology and economics. There is no Nobel Prize for mathematics, but many mathematicians have won the prize, most commonly for physics but occasionally for economics, and in one case for literature. For instance, when mathematician John Nash won a Nobel Prize in 1994, it was for a result that had a major impact in economics. But there is no dedicated nobel prize in mathematics - the mother of science, in my view. To me, it's RIDICULOUS! - http://mathforum.org/social/articles/ross.html - http://www.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~alopez-o/math-faq/node50.html However, there is AbelPrize -The Mathematicians Nobel! The Abel Prize, established by the Norwegian government in 2001 as an annual "Nobel Prize for Mathematics" and first awarded last year, will go this year to Professor Isadore Singer, 80, of MIT and Sir Michael Atiyah, 75, who has held an honorary position at the University of Edinburgh since he retired from Cambridge University a few years ago. The Abel Prize is intended to give the mathematicians their own equivalent of a Nobel Prize. Such an award was first proposed in 1902 by King Oscar II of Sweden and Norway, just a year after the award of the first Nobel Prizes. However, plans were dropped as the union between the two countries was dissolved in 1905. As a result, mathematics has never had an international prize of the same dimensions and importance as the Nobel Prize. Plans for an Abel Prize were revived in 2000, and in 2001 the Norwegian Government granted NOK 200 million (about $22 million) to create the new award. Niels Henrik Abel (1802-1829), after whom the prize is named, was a leading 19th-century Norwegian mathematician whose work in algebra has had lasting impact despite Abel's early death aged just 26. Today, every mathematics undergraduate encounters Abel's name in connection with commutative groups, which are more commonly known as "abelian groups" (the lack of capitalization being a tacit acknowledgement of the degree to which his name has been institutionalized). As it happens, Abel's own field of group theory plays a role in the Atiyah-Singer Index Theorem, but this is not a condition for the award of the Abel Prize. The Abel Prize is awarded annually, and is intended to present the field of mathematics with a prize at the highest level. Laureates are appointed by an independent committee of international mathematicians. As a result of Norway's action, made in part to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Abel's birth in 2002, mathematicians now too have an award equivalent to the Nobel Prize. The question is, will the new prize achieve the international luster of a real Nobel? The Nobel Prize in Economics (as it is popularly, but incorrectly, called) achieved that status after it was introduced in 1968, but in that case the Bank of Sweden, which created the award, attached the magic name Nobel to it. One could hardly expect Norway to name their prize after a famous Swede, especially when they have Abel to recognize. LooTe