Thursday, April 16, 2009

Abel Prize 2009

The Abel Prize for this year 2009 has been awarded to Mikhail Gromov. Courtesy my mathematics colleague Kapil Paranjape, there is a short (and long) description of the work that got the prize on my 'Science' blog The Far Side.

Happy Reading..

3 comments:

gaddeswarup said...

In one of the areas I know'Geometric Group Theory', Gromov's influence seems huge. His conceptualization showed that it is possible to work in this area without knowing traditional group theory and brought hundreds of mathematicians with different backgrounds to work in geometric group theory. Many universities in France have four or five mathematicians working in this area. I understand that he has similar influence in many other topics. I wonder whether there are some articles estimating his influence on modern mathematics.

Kapil Paranjape said...

G. A. Swarup wrote:

In one of the areas I know 'Geometric Group Theory'

The article referred to in the post is about GGT but is far to
elementary for you!

gaddeswarup said...

Kapil,
It is true that I fooled around a bit in Geometric Group Theory but there was a chance element in it. Earlier I browsed through Gromov's article and thought that it was sloppy. I could not grasp the idea of delta-thin. Then Walter Neumann gave a wonderful talk around 1992 and I realized that the delta in delta-thin can be quite large and things started falling into place. It is nice to have expository articles; they may help somebody like me somewhere.