László Lovász and Avi Wigderson to share the Abel Prize in 2021.
The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters has decided to award the Abel Prize for 2021 to László Lovász of Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics (ELKH, MTA Institute of Excellence) and Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary, and Avi Wigderson of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, USA.
For their foundational contributions to theoretical computer science and discrete mathematics, and their leading role in shaping them into central fields of modern mathematics.
Since 2003, the award that was named after a Norwegian mathematican, Niels Henrik Abel, has been given annually to mathematicans. This year the Abel Prize was announced in an unorthodox way for Dr. Lovász via a surprise video call. The good news was shared by the Secretary General of The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters: Gunn Elisabeth Birkelund, who welcomed Dr. Lovász and explained the reason behind the Academy's decision.
For Dr. Wigderson, it happened through a phone call that he had been told to wait for from the Norwegian Academy.
In the 1970s, mathematicans who worked on discrete mathematics realized that they could use it in computer science. Leading up to nowadays, we cannot imagine a life without the Internet and in the background of it, algorithms were being developed and Dr. Lovász and Dr. Wigderson played a vital part in it. According to Hans Munthe-Kaas, chair of the Abel Committee:
Thanks to the ground-breaking work of these two, discrete mathematics and the relatively young field of theoretical computer science are now firmly established as central areas of modern mathematics.
Both of these researchers help to bridge the two fields of mathematics and computer science together.
We congratulate to both of them!