US, French professors share top maths prize

0 Comments | AFP, May, 2008

OSLO (AFP) — An American and a French mathematician Tuesday were handed the world's top mathematics award, Norway's Abel Prize, worth more than a million dollars.

King Harald of Norway presented the award shared by John Griggs Thompson, 75, a mathematics professor at Florida University, and Jacques Tits, 77, professor at the College de France in Paris.

The award, created six years ago, seeks to make up for the absence of a Nobel mathematics prize. The Norwegian Academy of Science awarded it this year for distinguished work by the two mathematicians in developing modern group theory.

Yale graduate John Griggs Thompson took a doctorate from the University of Chicago and went on to teach at Cambridge University in England before taking up his present post in...