The Fields Medal is awarded every four years on the occasion of the International Congress of Mathematicians to recognize outstanding mathematical achievement for existing work and for the promise of future achievement.
Fields Medal Recipients Since Inception
Year | Winner |
1936 | Lars Valerian Ahlfors (Harvard University) (April 18, 1907 – October 11, 1996) |
Jesse Douglas (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) (July 3, 1897 – September 7, 1965) | |
1950 | Atle Selberg (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton) (June 14, 1917 – August 6, 2007) |
1954 | Kunihiko Kodaira (Princeton University) (March 16, 1915 – July 26, 1997) |
1962 | John Willard Milnor (Princeton University) (born February 20, 1931) |
1966 | Paul Joseph Cohen (Stanford University) (April 2, 1934 – March 23, 2007) |
Stephen Smale (University of California, Berkeley) (born July 15, 1930) | |
1970 | Heisuke Hironaka (Harvard University) (born April 9, 1931) |
1974 | David Bryant Mumford (Harvard University) (born June 11, 1937) |
1978 | Charles Louis Fefferman (Princeton University) (born April 18, 1949) |
Daniel G. Quillen (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) (June 22, 1940 – April 30, 2011) | |
1982 | William P. Thurston (Princeton University) (October 30, 1946 – August 21, 2012) |
Shing-Tung Yau (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton) (born April 4, 1949) | |
1986 | Gerd Faltings (Princeton University) (born July 28, 1954) |
Michael Freedman (University of California, San Diego) (born April 21, 1951) | |
1990 | Vaughan Jones (University of California, Berkeley) (born December 31, 1952) |
Edward Witten (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton) (born August 26, 1951) | |
1994 | Jean Bourgain (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton) (born February 28, 1954) |
Efim Zelmanov (University of Wisconsin) (born September 7, 1955) | |
1998 | Curtis T. McMullen (Harvard University) (born May 21, 1958) |
2002 | Vladimir Voevodsky (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton) (born June 4, 1966) |
2006 | Andrei Okounkov (Princeton University) (born June 26, 1969) |
Terence Tao (University of California, Los Angeles) (born July 17, 1975) | |
2010 | Ngô Bao Châu (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton) (born June 28, 1972) |
Explore the Higher Education Reporter
liberal arts innovation Vannevar Bush cost human contact digital Carnegie knowledge economy skills academic freedom nonprofit master plan debt human capital teaching aid leaders culture John Henry Newman tuition jobs interdisciplinary investment Higher Education Summit undergraduate Carnegie Commission on Higher Education Jonathan Cole scholarships American dream information "Science the Endless Frontier" governance MOOCs preparation curriculum "brain drain" Academically Adrift Martha Nussbaum individualize funding wage premium Morrill Act science grants knowledge-based loans technology merit Richard Arum rewards the idea of a university Josipa Roksa flexibility endowment employers value online Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities risk-taking competitiveness crisis revolution research Truman Commission