ON TUESDAY afternoon at the University of Oslo, King Harald V of Norway presented the very first Abel Prize in Mathematics to Jean-Pierre Serre of the Collège de France in Paris. The Abel Prize is intended to finally fill the gap left by Alfred Nobel, who chose to ignore maths when he established the Nobel prizes.
“I think the absence of a Nobel prize has lessened the perception of maths among the general public,” says John Ball of the University of Oxford, a member of the prize committee. There are already several international maths prizes, including the prestigious Fields Medal, which is often said to…
