‘Minimal surfaces’ mathematician claims Abel prize

Karen Keskulla Uhlenbeck has become the first woman to win the Abel Prize for mathematics in its nearly two decades of existence.

Uhlenbeck, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin in the United States, is the 2019 Abel Prize winner for her work on geometry and mathematical physics. The annual award from the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters—often compared in prestige to the Nobel prizes for other disciplines—comes with prize money of 6 million Norwegian kroner (€620,000).

“Her theories have revolutionised our understanding of minimal surfaces, such as those formed by soap bubbles, and more general minimisation problems in higher dimensions,” said Hans Munthe-Kaas, chair of the Abel Committee.