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Fields medal is the most prestigious and the highest level mathematics award.
I guess you are probably not a math major because you does not seem to know what it means to win a Fields medal....;.
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<p>Uh, no it is not, and I think you do not seem to know what the Fields Medal is. The Fields Medal is given to the best mathematician who is 40 or younger. But that's the key - why the age limit? Many would state that other math prizes like the Wolf Prize or the Crafoord Prize are more worthy prizes because they have no age limit. </p>
<p>Do your research before you post. </p>
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Harvard is older but MIT has much bigger science/math program. and there are much more MIT science/math alumni out there...
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<p>No, there is not. Harvard is bigger in science/math. Harvard has Harvard Medical School which is a huge science institution. Harvard has the School of Public Health, and a wide variety of other science institutions that MIT lacks. Add it up, and Harvard has more overall science people than MIT does.</p>
<p>I agree that the Field's Medal is the highest accomplishment/honour for a mathematician. That's a fact. There are some other awards that can be compared with the Nobel Prize; however, the Field's Medal somehow stands out here.</p>
<p>Apart from this, this discussion is ridiculous.</p>
<p>But, you know, even getting a Nobel Prize doesn't mean you're automatically the best scientist in your field, and not getting a Nobel doesn't mean you're a crappy scientist.</p>
<p>Since Nobels are awarded for a single discovery rather than a career's worth of work, some people get Nobel prizes even if the rest of their ideas aren't all that great. Kary Mullis, for example, is the guy who discovered PCR. The modern molecular biology revolution probably wouldn't have been possible without PCR, but that doesn't mean that Mullis is a great scientist -- his single publication since PCR is on his belief that HIV doesn't cause AIDS. His whole Nobel speech is about all the different women he slept with on the way to discovering PCR.</p>
<p>Another example is the 2004 laureate in medicine, Linda Buck. She discovered the genes for the receptor family that allows olfaction. It was a great discovery, but the paper she published announcing the discovery was really sloppy -- all circular logic and inappropriate experiments. She was right, as later experiments showed, but it certainly wouldn't have been surprising if she had been wrong.</p>
<p>A Nobel Prize is a great honor, but it's not the best way to determine if someone is a great scientist or not.</p>
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The Fields Medal is often described as the "Nobel Prize of mathematics", referring to its prestige within the mathematics field. But this comparison is not entirely accurate because the Fields Medal is only awarded every four years, and its recipients cannot be over the age of 40. (To be precise, a recipient's 40th birthday must not occur before January 1 of the year in which the Fields Medals are awarded.) Also, the monetary award given to each medalist is much lower than the approximate US$1.3 million given to a Nobel laureate when the prize is not shared. Finally, Fields Medals have generally been awarded for a body of work, rather than for a particular result; instead of a direct citation there is a speech of congratulation.
<p>This site doesn't recognize HTML, and even if it did, your posts would still look ugly becaue of your penchant for adding an extra slash at the end of your tags.</p>
<p>MIT graduate Jesse Douglas won the FIRST Fields Medal ever awarded (1936)
MIT Professor Daniel G. Quillen (faculty of MIT math department from 1965 to 1988) won the 1978 Fields Medal
MIT Post-doc student Curtis Tracy McMullen won the 1998 Fields Medal</p>
<p>These are the three that I know, there might be more.</p>