Argentine mathematician Luis Caffarellia 74-year-old from Buenos Aires, was the first Latin American to receive the Abel Prize, considered the Nobel Prize mathematics and endowed with 7.5 million Norwegian crowns (660,000 euros). The recognition was thanks to its contribution linked to the interactions between solids and liquidswhich opens new doors to medicine, automotive and knowledge of the universe
Caffarelli, in an interview granted to The country from Spain, told why his object of study is so complex and necessary, starting from the new world that is created in the interaction of ice in water, a microcosm in which he has been working for more than four decades.
His learning began at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), where he received his doctorate and then emigrated to the United States, where he lives, with a scholarship. There he went through the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, where the German physicist Albert Einstein ended up fleeing from the Nazis. In 2012, the UBA awarded him an honorary doctorate.
“Mathematics linked to physics are the most interesting. I am not very much in favor of doing super-abstract research, which can only be understood by half a dozen mathematicians”, said Caffarelli, who is also a member of the scientific advisory committee of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences (ICMAT), in Madrid. “You can’t reach the truth, but at least you can get closer to itto the complexity of reality”, affirmed the mathematician.
President, Alberto Fernandez, greeted the winner via Twitter: “I greatly congratulate the mathematician Luis A. Caffarelli for this Abel Prize, another example of infinite Argentine talent. Our public education makes us proud.”
The Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters, which awards the Abel Prize, highlighted the “technically virtuous” results, mainly in so-called free boundary problems, such as those mathematical models of what happens at the interface between water and ice. , or in an alloy of different molten metals that solidify at different rates.
“Caffarelli’s theorems have radically changed our understanding of classes of nonlinear partial differential equations with wide applications. His results are technically virtuoso and cover many different areas of the mathematics and its applications”, said the president of the Abel Prize Committee, Helge Holden.
Mathematics is everywhere and applies to everything we do
Caffarelli’s advances also made it possible to deepen the Navier-Stokes equations, which since 1845 have described the flow of a viscous fluid, such as oil. These studies are fundamental for the analysis of a person’s blood circulation, the prediction of the movement of oil, financial mathematics or the improvement of the fundamental models that explain the universe.
Caffarelli is the first Latin American to win the Abel Prizean award established in 2002 by the Norwegian government to fill the mathematical gap for the Nobels.
RB/ff
You may also like
Source link
