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