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