Sir Michael Atiyah – författare

Although the Fields Medal does not have the same public recognition as the Nobel Prizes, they share a similar intellectual standing. It is restricted to one field — that of mathematics. The medal is awarded to the best mathematicians who are 40 or younger, every four years.A list of Fields Medallists and their contributions provides a bird's-eye view of the major developments in mathematics over the past 80 years. It highlights the areas in which, at various times, the greatest progress has been made.The third edition of Fields Medallists' Lectures features additional contributions from: John W Milnor (1962), Enrico Bombieri (1974), Gerd Faltings (1986), Andrei Okounkov (2006), Terence Tao (2006), Cédric Villani (2010), Elon Lindenstrauss (2010), Ngô Bao Châu (2010), Stanislav Smirnov (2010).

Although the Fields Medal does not have the same public recognition as the Nobel Prizes, they share a similar intellectual standing. It is restricted to one field — that of mathematics — and an age limit of 40 has become an accepted tradition. Mathematics has in the main been interpreted as pure mathematics, and this is not so unreasonable since major contributions in some applied areas can be (and have been) recognized with Nobel Prizes.A list of Fields Medallists and their contributions provides a bird's-eye view of mathematics over the past 60 years. It highlights the areas in which, at various times, greatest progress has been made. This volume does not pretend to be comprehensive, nor is it a historical document. On the other hand, it presents contributions from Fields Medallists and so provides a highly interesting and varied picture.The second edition of Fields Medallists' Lectures features additional contributions from the following Medallists: Kunihiko Kodaira (1954), Richard E Borcherds (1998), William T Gowers (1998), Maxim Kontsevich (1998), Curtis T McMullen (1998) and Vladimir Voevodsky (2002).