Robert P. Langlands Receives 2005 AMS Steele Prize for a Seminal Contribution to Research

Contact: Mike Breen or Annette Emerson
AMS Public Awareness Officers
paoffice@ams.org
Phone: 401-455-4000 or
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January 6, 2005

Providence, RI:

The prize citation noted in particular Langlands' paper "Problems in the theory of automorphic forms," (Springer Lecture Notes in Math., vol. 170, 1970, pp. 18--86). This is the paper that introduced what are now known as the Langlands conjectures.

The Langlands conjectures assert deep relations among seemingly unconnected areas of mathematics and provide a unifying principle for investigations in different areas. The prize citation states: "The conjectures are still unproved, but many difficult cases have been established recently. It's hard to think of any other instance in the history of mathematics where conjectures gave so accurate a road map of what would turn out to be true in so many different situations. And few other conjectures have generated so much research of such high quality."

Find out more about AMS prizes at http://www.ams.org/prizes-awards.

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