Three days ago the Breakthrough Prize Foundation announced the recipients of the 2021 Breakthrough Prizes. I focus in this post only on the prizes in mathematics (there are also prizes in life sciences and physics).
- Martin Hairer is the recipient of the 2021 Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics for transformative contributions to the theory of stochastic analysis, particularly the theory of regularity structures in stochastic partial differential equations.
The recipients of the 2021 New Horizons in Mathematics Prize for early-career scientists are:
- Bhargav Bhatt for outstanding work in commutative algebra and arithmetic algebraic geometry, particularly on the development of p-adic cohomology theories.
- Aleksandr Logunov for novel techniques to study solutions to elliptic equations, and their application to long-standing problems in nodal geometry.
- Song Sun for many groundbreaking contributions to complex differential geometry, including existence results for Kahler-Einstein metrics and connections with moduli questions and singularities.
Further, three inaugural Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prizes were awarded to early-career women mathematicians:
- Nina Holden for work in random geometry, particularly on Liouville Quantum Gravity as a scaling limit of random triangulations.
- Urmila Mahadev for work that addresses the fundamental question of verifying the output of a quantum computation.
- Lisa Piccirillo for resolving the classic problem that the Conway knot is not smoothly slice.