
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
crisis revolution Truman Commission investment academic freedom merit American dream flexibility knowledge economy governance human capital tuition MOOCs scholarships Morrill Act aid jobs cost value interdisciplinary preparation culture debt research digital employers individualize skills grants Higher Education Summit funding Vannevar Bush competitiveness technology the idea of a university endowment human contact knowledge-based liberal arts Jonathan Cole Carnegie "Science the Endless Frontier" Academically Adrift information teaching Josipa Roksa Martha Nussbaum leaders "brain drain" rewards nonprofit Carnegie Commission on Higher Education curriculum science loans master plan undergraduate John Henry Newman Richard Arum innovation Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities wage premium online risk-taking