He's done the math

Dan Renzetti

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There is no Nobel Prize for mathematics, but there are three prizes that have been often cited as its equivalent: the Fields Medal, the Wolf Prize, and the Abel Prize. Now, Yale mathematician Gregory Margulis has won all three. In March, the Norwegian government announced that Margulis and Hillel Furstenberg of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem will share this year’s Abel Prize, established in 2002 for “outstanding scientific work in the field of mathematics.” Margulis, 74, the Erastus L. DeForest Professor Emeritus of Mathematics, won the Fields while living in his native Soviet Union before coming to Yale in 1991 and the Wolf in 2005. Among other things, he developed tools called expander graphs, which are relevant in designing computer networks. He and Furstenberg will share a prize of 7.5 million kroner (about $750,000 when we went to press).