Guest4, Noble never got married! surprised? well, read the link i provided. Here are some relevant facts: * Nobel never married, hence no ``wife''. (He did have a mistress, a Viennese woman named Sophie Hess.) * Gosta Mittag-Leffler was an important mathematician in Sweden in the late 19th-early 20th century. He was the founder of the journal Acta Mathematica, played an important role in helping the career of Sonya Kovalevskaya, and was eventually head of the Stockholm Hogskola, the precursor to Stockholms Universitet. However, it seems highly unlikely that he would have been a leading candidate for an early Nobel Prize in mathematics, had there been one - there were guys like Poincare and Hilbert around, after all. * There is no evidence that Mittag-Leffler had much contact with Alfred Nobel (who resided in Paris during the latter part of his life), still less that there was animosity between them for whatever reason. To the contrary, towards the end of Nobel's life Mittag-Leffler was engaged in ``diplomatic'' negotiations to try to persuade Nobel to designate a substantial part of his fortune to the Hogskola. It seems hardly likely that he would have undertaken this if there was prior bad blood between them. Although initially Nobel seems to have intended to do this, eventually he came up with the Nobel Prize idea - much to the disappointment of the Hogskola, not to mention Nobel's relatives and Fraulein Hess. * According to the very interesting study by Elisabeth Crawford, ``The Beginnings of the Nobel Institution'', Cambridge Univ. Press, 1984, pages 52-53: ================== NKC bro, i agree with you on that. Fields Medal is highly regarded. it is awarded to three or more mathematicians so the competition is little less stringent than Abel, have to say. Grigori Perelman, a mathematician from Russia, declined the award this year. he even rejected the prize money (a million dollar, i believe). and there are at least a couple of mathematicians who are claiming to have deserved it! hehe fuserrrrr, being too much rebelious is no good for health. watch out your diet! :P kohinoor, you are totally, totally out of sync! if you don't understand the stuffs being discussed, just zip it!!!! kali kali, get over your political agenda sometimes and watch the world with non-political and fair eyes. it's MORE beautiful. LooTe