The four winners of this year’s Fields Medals in mathematics have been announced.

The Fields Medals – often called ‘the Nobels of the maths world’ – were awarded to Elon Lindenstrauss, Ngô Bảo Châu, Stanislav Smirnov, and Cédric Villani at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Hyderabad, India.

Lindenstrauss, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was honoured for his work on ergodic theory, which looks at dynamical systems (maths journalist Julie Rehmeyer’s summary explains in more detail, and the mathematically minded may also like to read mathematician Harry Furstenberg’s laudation).

Ngô Bảo Châu, who works at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, gained his medal for his proof of the long standing Fundamental Lemma, a previously unproven part of the theories of mathematician Robert Langlands (Rehmeyer’s summary, James Arthur’s laudation).

Stanislav Smirnov, of the Université de Genève in Switzerland, took home his prize for his work on scaling limits in lattice models in statistical physics (Rehmeyer’s summary, Harry Kesten’s laudation).

Last but not least, Cédric Villani was honoured for his work on the Boltzmann equation, which applies probability to the motion of molecules (Rehmeyer’s summary, Horng-Tzer Yau’s laudation).

Also honoured at the meeting were Daniel Spielman, who took home the Nevanlinna Prize; Yves Meyer, winner of the Gauss Prize; and Louis Nirenberg, winner of the Chern Prize.

Winners list

Fields Medalists

Elon Lindenstrauss

Ngô Bảo Châu

Stanislav Smirnov

Cédric Villani

Nevanlinna Prize 2010

Daniel Spielman

Gauss Prize 2010

Yves Meyer

Chern Prize

Louis Nirenberg