<p>The Norwegian Academy has just announced that John Milnor (Princeton '51) has just won the Abel Prize in Mathematics. This prize is sometimes regarded as the "Nobel Prize of Math" since the Norwegian and Swedish Nobel Committees have no prize in that category.</p>
<p>Milnor graduated from Princeton then stayed for his PhD and was later a faculty member.</p>
<p>"Today the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters announced that the Abel Prize in mathematics for 2011 will be awarded to John Milnor, a topologist and dynamical systems theorist at Stony Brook University in New York state. King Harald of Norway will present the prize, which includes a monetary award of approximately $1 million, in a ceremony in Oslo on 24 May. The Abel Prize, first awarded in 2003, has rapidly acquired a nearly Nobel-level cachet among mathematicians.</p>
<p>For Milnor, the prize caps a long and distinguished mathematical career. He first attracted attention in 1950, when, as an undergraduate at Princeton University, he solved a previously unsolved problem on the total curvature of knots. Three years later he was appointed to the math faculty at Princeton while still working on his doctorate. . . .(continued)"</p>
<p>Pioneer</a> of High-Dimensional Spaces Wins Abel Prize - ScienceNOW</p>
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<p>The Abel Prize is relatively new, having been awarded only since 2003. Both of the last two Abel Laureates did their undergraduate work at Princeton. Princeton is the only undergraduate institution to be represented by more than one winner. An older and better known award in mathematics is the Fields Medal. The Wolf Prize is also prestigious. Princeton is highly represented in both of these as well.</p>
<p>Abel</a> Prize - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</p>
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<p>To learn more about studying mathematics at Princeton see:</p>