A Chinese-American and a Hungarian are to share the $100,000 Wolf Foundation Prize in mathematics for 1983/84, the Education Ministry and the Wolf Foundation announced today.
They are Prof. Shiing Chem, of the University of California in Berkeley, California, who was born in Kashing, China in 1911 and has been an American citizen since 1961, and Prof. Paul Erdos, born in 1913, of the Mathematical Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest.
Chern was cited for his outstanding contributions to “global differential geometry, which have profoundly influenced all mathematics.”
Erdos, said to be “one of the most prolific mathematicians of all times” was nominated for his “numerous contributions to number theory, combinatorics, probability, set theory, and mathematical analysis, and for personally stimulating mathematicians the world over.” He lived principally in the U.S. between 1938 and 1954 and is considered a “roving ambassador of mathematics,” having lectured throughout the world.
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