VI. Compare the major awards in Mathematics with the Nobel Prize by using like (similar to) or unlike (different from) in the sentences

1. ____ the Nobel Prize the Fields Medal comes with the monetary award.

2. ____ the Nobel Prize the Fields Medal has an age limit.

3. The Abel Prize has a large monetary prize ____ a Nobel one.

4. ____ the Noble Prize the Abel Prize recognizes lifetime achievements of scientists.

5. ____ the Fields Medal each Wolf Prize consists of a diploma and US$100,000

V. Search for more information on the following topics on the Internet and share it with other students

I. One of the famous awards in Mathematics is … (Schock Prize, Nevanlinna Prize, Nemmers Prize …).

II. The great laureate (see the tables below).

III. The outstanding mathematician(s) of Ukraine (in the former USSR republic or at the present time).

Abel Prize Laureates

Year	Laureate(s)	Nationality	Citation
2003	Jean-Pierre Serre	France	“for playing a key role in shaping the modern form of many parts of mathematics, including topology, algebraic geometry and number theory”
2004	Michael F. Atiyah Isadore M. Singer	United Kingdom  Lebanon  United States	“for their discovery and proof of the index theorem, bringing together topology, geometry and analysis, and their outstanding role in building new bridges between mathematics and theoretical physics”
2005	Peter D. Lax	Hungary /  United States	“for his groundbreaking contributions to the theory and application of partial differential equations and to the computation of their solutions”
2006	Lennart Carleson	Sweden	“for his profound and seminal contributions to harmonic analysis and the theory of smooth dynamical systems”
2007	S. R. Srinivasa Varadhan	India /  United States	“for his fundamental contributions to probability theory and in particular for creating a unified theory of large deviation”
2008	John G. Thompson Jacques Tits	United States;  Belgium /  France	“for their profound chievements in algebra and in particular for shaping modern group theory”
2009	Mikhail Gromov	Russia /  France	"for his revolutionary contributions to geometry"
2010	John Tate	United States	"for his vast and lasting impact on the theory of numbers"

Text 8

Reading and Speaking

Fields medalist

Vladimir Gershonovich Drinfel’d was born on the 14^th of February in 1954. His home town was Kharkov. In 1969, at the age of 15, Vladimir Drinfel’d represented the Soviet Union at the International Mathematics Olympiad in Bucharest, Romania (the first IMO), and won a gold medal with the full score of 40 points. The same year he entered Moscow State University and graduated from it in 1974. Then at the age of twenty, Drinfel’d announced a proof of the Langland’s conjectures. In the course of proving the conjectures, Drinfel’d introduced a new class of objects which he called Elliptic modules. Since that time these modules have also become known as shtukas and Drinfel’d modules. In 1978 Drinfel’d was awarded the Candidate of Sciences degree. He became a researcher at the Institute of Physics of Low Temperatures of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Kharkiv. In 1983 Drinfel’d published a short article that expanded the scope of the Langland’s conjectures. His work related algebraic geometry over finite fields with number theory, especially the theory of automorphic forms, through the notions of elliptic module and the theory of the geometric Langland’s correspondence. Later in collaboration with his advisor Yuri Manin, he achieved a new result which was independently proved by Michael Atiyah and Nigel Hitchin. In 1986 at the International Congress of Mathematicians he coined the term "Quantum group"" in reference to Hopf algebra and connected it to the study of the Yang–Baxter equation, which was a necessary condition for the solvability of statistical mechanical models. He also generalized Hopf algebra to quasi-Hopf algebra, and introduced the study of ‘Drinfel’d twists’, which can be used to factorize the R-matrix corresponding to the solution of the Yang–Baxter equation associated with a quasi-triangular Hopf algebra. He introduced the notion of a quantum group (independently discovered by Michio Jimbo at the same time). In 1988 he was awarded Doctor of Sciences degree from the Steklov Mathematical Institute.

Later Drinfel’d moved to mathematical physics. He made important contributions into mathematical physics, including algebraic formalism of the Quantum Inverse Scattering Method. In 1990 he was awarded the Fields Medal. In 1992 Drinfel’d was elected a corresponding member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

Currently, Drinfel’d is the Harry Pratt Judson Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago.

Drinfel’d has also collaborated with Alexander Beilinson to rebuild the theory of vertex algebras which has become increasingly important to conformal field theory, string theory and the geometric Langland’s program. His new work dealing with algebra appeared in a book form in 2004.