Breakthrough Prize for Mathematics: Winners by Year

Award years

• 2026

  • Frank Merle

    for breakthroughs in nonlinear evolution equations, with regards to their stability, singularity formation, or resolution into solitons.

• 2025

  • Dennis Gaitsgory

    for his central role in the proof of the geometric Langlands conjecture.

• 2024

  • Simon Brendle

    for transformative contributions to differential geometry, including sharp geometric inequalities, many results on Ricci flow and mean curvature flow and the Lawson conjecture on minimal tori in the 3-sphere.

• 2023

  • Daniel Spielman

    for breakthrough contributions to theoretical computer science and mathematics, including to spectral graph theory, the Kadison-Singer problem, numerical linear algebra, optimization, and coding theory.

• 2022

  • Takurō Mochizuki

    for monumental work leading to a breakthrough in our understanding of the theory of bundles with flat connections over algebraic varieties, including the case of irregular singularities.

• 2021

  • Martin Hairer

    for transformative contributions to the theory of stochastic analysis, particularly the theory of regularity structures in stochastic partial differential equations.

• 2020

  • Alex Eskin, Maryam Mirzakhani

    for revolutionary discoveries in the dynamics and geometry of moduli spaces of Abelian differentials, including the proof of the 'magic wand theorem'.

• 2019

  • Vincent Lafforgue

    for ground breaking contributions to several areas of mathematics, in particular to the Langlands program in the function field case.

• 2018

  • Christopher Hacon, James McKernan

    for transformational contributions to birational algebraic geometry, especially to the minimal model program in all dimensions.

• 2017

  • Jean Bourgain

    for multiple transformative contributions to analysis, combinatorics, partial differential equations, high-dimensional geometry and number theory.

• 2016

  • Ian Agol

    for spectacular contributions to low dimensional topology and geometric group theory, including work on the solutions of the tameness, virtually Haken and virtual fibering conjectures.

• 2015

  • Jacob Lurie

    for his work on the foundations of higher category theory and derived algebraic geometry; for the classification of fully extended topological quantum field theories; and for providing a moduli-theoretic interpretation of elliptic cohomology.

  • Maxim Kontsevich

    for work making a deep impact in a vast variety of mathematical disciplines, including algebraic geometry, deformation theory, symplectic topology, homological algebra and dynamical systems.

  • Richard Taylor

    for numerous breakthrough results in the theory of automorphic forms, including the Taniyama–Weil conjecture, the local Langlands conjecture for general linear groups, and the Sato–Tate conjecture.

  • Simon Donaldson

    for the new revolutionary invariants of 4-dimensional manifolds and for the study of the relation between stability in algebraic geometry and in global differential geometry, both for bundles and for Fano varieties.

  • Terence Tao

    for numerous breakthrough contributions to harmonic analysis, combinatorics, partial differential equations and analytic number theory.