Deligne wins Abel Prize 2013

This year’s Abel Prize has been awarded to the Belgian mathematician Pierre Deligne for “seminal contributions to algebraic geometry and for their transformative impact on number theory, representation theory, and related fields”. The Abel Prize was established in 2003 in memory of the Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel. It’s awarded annually by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and makes up for the fact that there isn’t a Nobel Prize in mathematics.

Pierre René, Viscount Deligne ([dəliɲ]; born 3 October 1944) is a highly influential mathematician. He is known for work on the Weil conjectures, leading finally to a complete proof in 1973.

He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1978, the Crafoord Prize in 1988, the Balzan Prize in 2004, the Wolf Prize in 2008, and the Abel Prize in 2013.

In 2006 he was ennobled by the Belgian king as viscount.

In 2009, Deligne was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.