Prestigious Abel Prize for mathematics awarded to German researcher
Bonn mathematician Gerd Faltings is the first German to receive the Abel Prize – in recognition of work that has transformed his field.
Bonn/Oslo (dpa, d.de) – The German mathematician Gerd Faltings has become the first German to receive the prestigious Abel Prize, awarded by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. The prize committee praised Faltings for his achievements in arithmetic geometry, stating: “His ideas and results have shaped the field and led to the resolution of long-standing conjectures. At the same time, he introduced new methods that have influenced subsequent work for decades.”
Named after Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel, the Abel Prize will be presented at a formal ceremony in Oslo on 26 May 2026. The prize money amounts to 7.5 million Norwegian kroner – around 670,000 euros – and is funded by the Norwegian government.
Faltings is an emeritus professor at the University of Bonn and a former director of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn. Together with the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics, established in 2006, the Bonn research hub is regarded as one of the world’s leading centres for mathematical research. The Fields Medal – the second major distinction in mathematics – has also been awarded several times to researchers associated with Bonn: to Faltings himself in 1986, to Bonn professor Peter Scholze in 2018, and to mathematician Maryna Viazovska, who completed her doctorate in Bonn, in 2022.
