Argentinian-born mathematician Luis Caffarelli has won the 2023 Abel Prize, one of mathematics’ most coveted awards. This is due to his work on equations important for describing physical phenomena such as ice melting and fluid flow. He is the first South American-born to receive the award.
Caffarelli’s results are “technically excellent and cover many areas of mathematics and its applications,” said Helge, a mathematician at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim and chairman of the Abel Commission. Holden said.
Winner says it was an emotional moment when he received the news because it “shows that people appreciate me and my science.”
Caffarelli was born in Buenos Aires in 1948. After completing his doctorate, he moved to the United States in 1973 and spent the rest of his career at various institutions, including the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He is currently at the University of Texas at Austin.
smooth solution
Many of Caffarelli’s most famous results concern the regularity (or lack of regularity) of solutions to so-called partial differential equations. These are his one of the most important equations in mathematics and physics. They contain multiple variables. Usually time and one or more spatial dimensions. Regularity means smoothness, preventing the solution from forming twists or escaping to infinity. In mathematical physics, solutions are often expected to be regular because the equations model phenomena on a macroscopic scale (where things like temperature and pressure distributions look smooth) and infinity is non-physical.
In his first major breakthrough, Caffarelli proved the regularity of melting ice. That is, when ice turns to water, the surface of the ice remains almost smooth. His results have been refined in his 2021 by Fields, his medalist, Alessio Figari and his collaborators at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.
In another famous paper, in 1982 Caffarelli joined forces with the late 2015 Abel Laureate Louis Nierenberg and Robert Cohn of New York University to solve one of the most infamous problems in mathematical physics. I worked on the regularity of a certain movement. A fluid described by the standard theory of fluid mechanics known as the Navier-Stokes equation.
Although the trio proved partial results, it remains essentially the best-known solution to this day and Caffarelli’s proudest achievement. However, perfect regularity is still an open problem, and in 2000 he was included in his one of the seven Millennium Problems by the Clay Mathematics Institute. The Clay Mathematics Institute is offering his $1 million prize to whoever solves it first. In principle, it is still possible that the equations have no regularity and instead the turbulent velocity “explodes” to infinity. Become a model.Introduction of the Millennium Problem. More recently, Caffarelli has moved on to study his Monge-Ampère equations, which are important in geometry.
great intuition
In a 2002 interview, Nirenberg said Caffarelli had “great intuition” that made it difficult for collaborators to keep up with him. “He somehow can immediately see things that other people don’t see, but he’s not very good at explaining it,” he said. Nirenberg also implored Caffarelli to publish more. Caffarelli was in the habit of writing only a fraction of the ideas he discussed with his peers.
“People say, ‘How did he come up with that?’ He can do things that people didn’t expect,” says Holden.
Caffarelli describes his style of doing math as “fun.” “I enjoy collaboration, creativity and lasting friendships,” he says.
Holden adds that the fact that Caffarelli was raised and educated in Argentina gives the award a special meaning. “I think this will have a big impact on the area,” he says. “It shows that talent can come from anywhere.”
Caffarelli will receive the medal and 7.5 million Norwegian kroner ($700,000) at an awards ceremony in Oslo on May 23. The Abel Prize is partly modeled after the Nobel Prize, which cites specific discoveries, but many see it as a “career award.”Of her 26 winners to date. , there is only one woman, Karen Keskla Uhlenbeck.
This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on March 22, 2023.
