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