The 2018 Abel Prize has been awarded to Robert Langlands, an excellent choice. The so-called “Langlands program” has been a huge influence on modern mathematics, providing deep insight into the structure of number theory while linking together disparate fields of mathematics, as well as quantum field theories and physics.<\/p>\n
The Abel Prize site provides a wealth of information about Langlands and his work<\/a>. Davide Castelvecchi at Nature<\/a> appropriately describes the Langlands program as a “grand unified theory of mathematics” (Edward Frenkel’s Love and Math<\/a> popularized this description).<\/p>\n Many blog posts here<\/a> have discussed the Langlands program and ideas that have developed out of it. For a good example of how wide the impact of these ideas has been, this week the Perimeter Institute will be hosting a conference<\/a> discussing the latest work on the geometric version of the Langlands program, as well as connections to gauge theory and conformal field theory.<\/p>\n For the original work of Langlands himself, besides the material at the Abel site, the AMS Bulletin has recently published a long article by Julia Mueller<\/a>. For the original sources and a wealth of other material written by Langlands himself, see the IAS site that collects his writings<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The 2018 Abel Prize has been awarded to Robert Langlands, an excellent choice. The so-called “Langlands program” has been a huge influence on modern mathematics, providing deep insight into the structure of number theory while linking together disparate fields of … Continue reading