Stanford University Professor Akshay Venkatesh has been awarded the 2018 Fields Medal for his achievements in mathematics.
The medal was given to Professor Venkatesh on Wednesday at the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for his outstanding discoveries in mathematics which includes synthesis of analytic number theory, homogeneous dynamics, and topology and representation theory.
Venkatesh is the third Stanford mathematician to win this award after Maryam Mirzakhani, who won it in 2014, and Paul Cohen, who won in 1966.
“We are incredibly proud of his contributions to mathematics, and I know his work will serve as an inspiration to aspiring mathematicians at Stanford and throughout the world,” Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne said while congratulating him with the achievement.
Eleny Ionel, chair of the mathematics department in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford, called Venkatesh a great teacher and wonderful colleague and said, “Akshay is a broad mathematician with a variety of interests spanning across several fields, and with an extraordinary ability to work collaboratively with experts in many different areas.”
Venkatesh earned his doctorate from Princeton University and joined Stanford in 2008. He spent past year on sabbatical working at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
