John Nash, Louis Nirenberg share math’s Abel Prize

Pair to split ‘Nobel of mathematics’ for work on partial differential equations

John Nash (left) and Louis Nirenberg (right) will receive the 2015 Abel Prize for their work on partial differential equations.

Nash: Courtesy of Princeton; Nirenberg: ©NYU Photo Bureau: Hollenshead

By Lila Guterman

March 25, 2015 at 4:53 pm

The 2015 Abel Prize, sometimes called the Nobel Prize of mathematics, will go to John F. Nash Jr. and Louis Nirenberg for work on partial differential equations, which are important in both pure math and describing natural phenomena.

Nash, of Princeton University and well-known as the subject of the book and movie A Beautiful Mind, shared the 1994 Nobel Prize in economics for work on game theory.

Nash and Nirenberg, of New York University, will split the approximately $760,000 prize for “striking and seminal contributions to the theory of nonlinear partial differential equations and its applications to geometric analysis,” the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters announced on March 25.

NYU’s Robert Kohn told Nature, “Louis Nirenberg and John Nash have had huge influence on this field, not only by solving important problems, but more importantly by introducing fundamentally new methods and ideas.”