Definition:Fields Medal/Recipients/1998

Recipients of the Fields Medal

The recipients of the Fields Medal in $1998$ were as follows:

Recipient(s)	Citation
Richard Ewen Borcherds	For his contributions to algebra, the theory of automorphic forms, and mathematical physics, including the introduction of vertex algebras and Borcherds' Lie algebras, the proof of the Conway–Norton moonshine conjecture and the discovery of a new class of automorphic infinite products.
William Timothy Gowers	For his contributions to functional analysis and combinatorics, developing a new vision of infinite-dimensional geometry, including the solution of two of Banach's problems and the discovery of the so called Gowers' dichotomy: every infinite dimensional Banach space contains either a subspace with many symmetries (technically, with an unconditional basis) or a subspace every operator on which is Fredholm of index zero.
Maxim Lvovich Kontsevich	For his contributions to algebraic geometry, topology, and mathematical physics, including the proof of Witten's conjecture of intersection numbers in moduli spaces of stable curves, construction of the universal Vassiliev invariant of knots, and formal quantization of Poisson manifolds.
Curtis Tracy McMullen	For his contributions to the theory of holomorphic dynamics and geometrization of three-manifolds, including proofs of Bers' conjecture on the density of cusp points in the boundary of the Teichmüller space, and Kra's theta-function conjecture.

A silver plate was awarded to Andrew Wiles as a special tribute.

Location of conference: Berlin, Germany