AUSTIN (KXAN) — A professor at the University of Texas at Austin was awarded mathematics’ highest prize this week.
The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters named Luis A. Caffarelli, a UT professor of mathematics, winner of the 2023 Abel Prize.
The prize is considered the Nobel Prize equivalent in mathematics and one of the top international awards.
Norway’s King Harald V will present the Abel Prize to Caffarelli at an award ceremony in Oslo on May 23. He is the first Latin American mathematician to receive the award.
Caffarelli holds the Sid W. Richardson Foundation Regents Chair in Mathematics #1 at UT Austin.
A press release from UT said Caffarelli has helped “advance the understanding of some of the most formidable problems in all of mathematics.”
“For more than a quarter century here at UT, Luis Caffarelli has introduced ingenious new techniques that show brilliant geometrical insight,” said Jay Hartzell, president of The University of Texas at Austin.
The Abel Prize recognizes achievements in mathematics at any stage of a mathematician’s career, according to the release.
The Abel Prize comes with a monetary award of 7.5 million Norwegian kroner, or approximately $710,000.
Caffarelli has won many of his field’s top prizes and honors since joining UT Austin in 1997, including the Leroy P. Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Mathematics, the Wolf Prize and the Shaw Prize. He is married to Irene M. Gamba, a fellow internationally renowned Argentinian-American mathematician, also at UT Austin.
UT Professor Robert Metcalfe was also awarded this week, for the invention, standardization and commercialization of Ethernet. He received the 2022 Association for Computing Machinery A.M. Turing Award – referred to as the “Nobel Prize of Computing.”
According to the release, this is the second time in five years –and the third time since it was established in 2003 — that a UT Austin faculty member has received the Abel Prize.
The late professor emeritus John Tate received the award in 2010, and professor emerita Karen Uhlenbeck won it in 2019.