2023 Abel Prize in Mathematics honors Louis Caffarelli

Abel, named after Niels Henrik Abel, a Norwegian mathematician, was created as Nobel. Since 2003 it has been presented annually to highlight important developments in mathematics. Previous winners of the prize include Andrew J. Wiles, who proved Fermat’s Last Theorem and is now at the University of Oxford. John F. Nash Jr., whose life is depicted in “A Beautiful Mind”; and Karen Eulenbeck, Professor Emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin, who in 2019 became the first woman to receive an Abel award.

Last year, Dennis B. Sullivan, professor of mathematics at Stony Brook University and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, won the Abel Prize for work in topology, the study of space and shapes.

While the secrets of the Nobel Prizes are kept closely, the Abel Committee informs the winner’s foundation days in advance. Then find out how and when to share the news with the winner.

Thomas Chen, chair of the mathematics department at Texas, scheduled a Zoom call Friday morning with Dr. Caffarelli and his wife, Irene Gamba, also a mathematician at the university. d said Caffarelli said he thinks the call might be about someone joining the mathematics department.

Instead, John Elisabeth Birkelund, secretary general of the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters, which administers the Abel Prize, joined the call to tell him he was the winner.

“It was a surprise, a complete surprise,” said Dr. Caffarelli.

Dr. was born. Caffarelli in Buenos Aires in 1948. After completing his Ph.D. At the University of Buenos Aires in 1972, he moved north to the University of Minnesota where he learned about the hitch problem.

In 1980, he moved to the Courant Institute for Mathematical Sciences at New York University, where he collaborated with Dr. Nirenberg and Dr. Kuhn on Navier-Stokes research. He later worked at the University of Chicago and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ, before returning to Courant in 1994. In 1997, he transferred to the University of Texas.