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The Fields Medal is often described as the " Nobel Prize of mathematics". The comparison is not very accurate, in particular because the age limit is applied strictly. Moreover, Fields Medals have generally been awarded for a body of work, rather than for a particular result. LAUREATES
UNUSUAL CIRCUMSTANCES In 1978, Gregori Margulis, due to restrictions placed on him by the Soviet government, was unable to travel to the congress in Helsinki to receive his medal. The award was accepted on his behalf by Jacques Tits , who said in his address:
In 1982, the congress was to be held in Warsaw, Poland but had to be moved to the next year, due to political instability. The awards were announced at the ninth General Assembly of the IMU earlier in the year and awarded at the 1983 Warsaw congress. In 1998, at the ICM, Andrew Wiles was presented by the chair of the Fields Medal Committee, Yuri Manin, with the first-ever IMU silver plaque in recognition of his proof of Fermat's Last Theorem . Accounts of this award frequently make reference that at the time of the award Wiles was over the age limit for the Fields medal, e.g. see [http://wwwa.britannica.com/eb/article-9090319] He was thought to be a favorite to win the medal in 1994, but a gap (later resolved by Wiles) was found in 1993. [http://www.ams.org/featurecolumn/archive/wiles.html] THE FIELDS MEDAL IN POPULAR CULTURE In the 1997 film Good Will Hunting , fictional MIT professor Gerald Lambeau (played by Stellan Skarsgård ) is described as having been awarded a Fields Medal for his work in Combinatorial Mathematics . In the film A Beautiful Mind , John Forbes Nash complains about not winning the Fields Medal , along with not being the only one on the cover of Fortune Magazine . SEE ALSO Other top math prizes
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