Sir Michael Atiyah awarded Abel Prize

13 April 2004

The 2004 Abel Prize has been awarded to Sir Michael Atiyah, OM, FRS, and his long-time collaborator Isadore Singer, for their discovery and proof of the index theorem, achieved while Atiyah was at Oxford.

Sir Michael is currently Honorary Professor at the University of Edinburgh. He was elected to a Fellowship at St Catherine's College, Oxford, in 1961, and held the Savilian Chair of Geometry from 1963 to 1969. After three years at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton, he returned to Oxford and held a Royal Society Research Chair at the Mathematical Institute until 1990, when he left to become Master of Trinity College, Cambridge.

The Abel Prize was established in 2002 by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters for outstanding scientific work in the field of Mathematics, giving mathematics for the first time an international prize of the same scale and importance as the Nobel Prize. The prize, worth about 750,000 Euros, was awarded to Atiyah and Singer 'for their discovery and proof of the index theorem, bringing together topology, geometry and analysis, and their outstanding role in building new bridges between mathematics and theoretical physics.'

The index theorem unifies swathes of mathematical theories that were once thought to be unrelated, bringing together branches of maths from topology to geometry. Atiyah and Singer's work can be described as a tool that helps scientists work out how many solutions there are to problems they are trying to unpick – such as how heat flows, or how an object moves. 'It is basically a formula that counts the number of solutions to another equation,' said Sir Michael.

'This theory is now a cornerstone of maths; it is one of the most fundamental results of the last 50 years,' said Elmer Rees, a colleague of Atiyah's at Edinburgh University. Professor Marcus du Sautoy at Oxford said: 'It was as if an archaeologist had discovered exactly the same patterns on tombs in completely different parts of the world, proving that some underlying civilization had carved them all.'

Professor Frances Kirwan, FRS, President of the London Mathematical Society and Fellow of Balliol College, said: 'I am enormously pleased at the award to Michael and Is of this prestigious prize. It is a very appropriate recognition of the fundamental importance of their work over the last four decades, which has had a huge impact on so many areas of mathematics and theoretical physics.'

Sir Michael is a member and former president of both the Royal Society and the London Mathematical Society. He attended Manchester Grammar School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he received his PhD in 1955. He spent time at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton, and at Cambridge University, before being appointed Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford in 1963. He received the Fields Medal in 1966 and was awarded a Royal Society Research Professorship in 1973. He was elected Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1990, and was Director of the Isaac Newton Institute, Cambridge. He was President of the London Mathematical Society from 1975 to 1977 and received its De Morgan Medal (its highest award) in 1980. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1962 and was its President from 1990-95. He was knighted in 1983 and was made a Member of the Order of Merit in 1992.

The Abel Prize was established in 2001 by the government of Norway, marking the bicentenary of the birth of the Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel. Abel, who died at 26 of tuberculosis, revolutionized the theory of equations, complex analysis, number theory and algebraic geometry. Along with the Fields medal, which Sir Michael has also been awarded, the Abel Prize is considered the maths equivalent of the Nobel Prize.