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Professor Ian Agol (S\u00f8ren Fuglede J\u00f8rgensen, Wikipedia – Creative Commons)<\/p><\/div>\n
Congratulations to\u00a0Ian Agol<\/a>\u00a0for being awarded the 2016 Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics<\/a>, the so-called, \u201cOscars of Science\u201d and mathematics [1]! Tech entrepreneurs Mark Zuckerberg and Yuri Milner created the Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics in 2014 to, \u201cReward[s] significant discoveries across the many branches of the subject.\u201d The prize carries a 3 million dollar award, and was announced during a live televised red carpet ceremony complete with celebrities like Kate Hudson, Pharrell Williams, and Christina Aguilera.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Agol is a topologist with much of his work focusing on the topology of three manifolds. In addition to many of other contributions Agol, together with Daniel Groves and Jason Manning, proved<\/a> the Virtual Haken Conjecture [2]. I am no expert in low dimensional topology, yet alone the Virtual Haken Conjecture, and I will just point people to Quanta’s\u00a0very nice article<\/a> giving a non-technical overview. Danny Calegari also has an excellent series of blog posts<\/a> getting into the more technical aspects of Agol’s work.<\/p>\n In addition to Agol, Larry Guth and\u00a0Andr\u00e9 Arroja Neves were awarded the New Horizon in Mathematics Prize. This\u00a0prize, also funded by Zuckerberg and Milner, recognizes, \u201cJunior researchers in the field of mathematics who have already produced important work.\u201d In perhaps one of the more interesting aspects\u00a0of the evening Peter Scholze turned down the New Horizons prize, according to Michael Harris<\/a>\u00a0and The Guardian [2]. Congratulations to all those recognized tonight!<\/p>\n Citations:<\/p>\n [1] – Seth MacFarlane, “Breakthrough Prize Monologue.”<\/p>\n [2] – Ian Sample, “Academics land \u00a32m prizes at Zuckerberg-backed ‘science Oscars’.” The Guardian.<\/p>\n