Several prizes are awarded periodically for outstanding mathematical achievement. There is no Nobel Prize in mathematics, and the most prestigious mathematical award
is known as the Fields medal. In rough order of importance,
other awards are the Wolf Prize of the Wolf Foundation of Israel, the Leroy
P. Steele Prize of the American Mathematical Society, followed by the Bôcher
Prize, Cole Prizes in algebra and number theory,
and the Delbert Ray Fulkerson Prize, all presented by the American Mathematical Society.
The Clay Mathematics Institute of Cambridge, Massachusetts (CMI) has named seven "Millennium Prize Problems," selected by focusing on important classic
questions in mathematics that have resisted solution over the years. A $7 million
prize fund has been established for the solution to these problems, with $1 million
allocated to each. The problems consist of the Riemann
hypothesis, Poincaré conjecture,
Hodge conjecture, Swinnerton-Dyer
conjecture, solution of the Navier-Stokes equations, formulation of Yang-Mills
theory, and determination of whether NP-problems are
actually P-problems.
A cash prize of $100000 has been offered for proof or discovery of a counterexample
to Beal's conjecture.
In the Season 1 episode "Prime Suspect" (2005) of the television crime drama NUMB3RS,
it is mentioned that solving the Riemann hypothesis
is one of the Millennium Prize Problems.
Wolf Prize of the Wolf Foundation of Israel, the Leroy
P. Steele Prize of the American Mathematical Society, followed by the Bôcher
Prize, Cole Prizes in algebra and number theory,
and the Delbert Ray Fulkerson Prize, all presented by the American Mathematical Society.
