Thursday, March 27, 2008

Thompson and Tits share the Abel Prize for 2008

The Abel prize which is now regarded as something as an equivalent of the Nobel prize for mathematics has been announced for the year 2008. It has been awarded to Thompson and Tits. You can read about it here.
Posted by at

2 comments:

gaddeswarup said...

I met John Thompson once in the eighties. He was visiting TIFR and came to Delhi for a couple of days and I was asked to arrange a talk and take care of the local arrangements. He seemed a very nice and modest person. I knew about his work on groups of odd order and his reputation. I was not in to his type of group theory and there was nobody who could follow his work and it was one of those situations. I did have small paper on group theory and he took the trouble to discuss it. I asked him how he was spending his time in TIFR since there was nobody in finite group theory there. He replied that there was Madhav Nori and talking to him was like talking to Serre (first Abel prize winner). Later I had to write a letter for Madhav and since I did not know much about his work either, I just mentioned this comment from John Thompson.

11:12 am
Anant said...

Dear Swarup,

I feel honoured that you should share this vignette at this site. Thanks.

Regards, Anant

10:14 pm

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)