The Pólya Prize is a prize in
mathematics
Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...
, awarded by the
London Mathematical Society
The London Mathematical Society (LMS) is one of the United Kingdom's Learned society, learned societies for mathematics (the others being the Royal Statistical Society (RSS), the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (IMA), the Edinburgh ...
. Second only to the triennial
De Morgan Medal
The De Morgan Medal is a prize for outstanding contribution to mathematics, awarded by the London Mathematical Society. The Society's most prestigious award, it is given in memory of Augustus De Morgan, who was the first President of the society ...
in prestige among the society's awards, it is awarded in the years that are not divisible by three – those in which the De Morgan Medal is not awarded. First given in 1987, the prize is named after Hungarian mathematician
George Pólya
George Pólya (; ; December 13, 1887 – September 7, 1985) was a Hungarian-American mathematician. He was a professor of mathematics from 1914 to 1940 at ETH Zürich and from 1940 to 1953 at Stanford University. He made fundamental contributi ...
, who was a member of the society for over 60 years.
The prize is awarded "in recognition of outstanding creativity in, imaginative exposition of, or distinguished contribution to, mathematics within the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
".
It cannot be given to anyone who has previously received the De Morgan Medal.
List of winners
* 1987
John Horton Conway
John Horton Conway (26 December 1937 – 11 April 2020) was an English mathematician. He was active in the theory of finite groups, knot theory, number theory, combinatorial game theory and coding theory. He also made contributions to many b ...
* 1988
C. T. C. Wall
* 1990
Graeme B. Segal
* 1991
Ian G. Macdonald
* 1993
David Rees
* 1994
David Williams
* 1996
David Edmunds
* 1997
John Hammersley
John Michael Hammersley, (21 March 1920 – 2 May 2004) was a British mathematician best known for his foundational work in the theory of self-avoiding walks and percolation theory.
Early life and education
Hammersley was born in Helensburgh i ...
* 1999
Simon Donaldson
Sir Simon Kirwan Donaldson (born 20 August 1957) is an English mathematician known for his work on the topology of smooth function, smooth (differentiable) four-dimensional manifolds, Donaldson–Thomas theory, and his contributions to Kähl ...
* 2000
Terence Lyons
* 2002
Nigel Hitchin
* 2003
Angus Macintyre
* 2005
Michael Berry
* 2006
Peter Swinnerton-Dyer
* 2008
David Preiss
* 2009
Roger Heath-Brown
David Rodney "Roger" Heath-Brown is a British mathematician working in the field of analytic number theory.
Education
He was an undergraduate and graduate student of Trinity College, Cambridge; his research supervisor was Alan Baker.
Career ...
* 2011
E. Brian Davies
* 2012
Dan Segal
* 2014
Miles Reid
* 2015
Boris Zilber
* 2017
Alex Wilkie
* 2018
Karen Vogtmann
* 2020
Martin W. Liebeck
* 2021
Ehud Hrushovski
* 2023
Frances Kirwan
See also
*
List of mathematics awards
This list of mathematics awards contains articles about notable awards for mathematics. The list is organized by the region and country of the organization that sponsors the award, but awards may be open to mathematicians from around the world. Som ...
References
List of LMS prize winnersLondon Mathematical Society
The Pólya Prize of the London Mathematical SocietyMacTutor History of Mathematics
{{DEFAULTSORT:Polya Prize (Lms)
British science and technology awards
Awards established in 1987
Awards of the London Mathematical Society