Masaki Kashiwara, Japanese mathematics scientist, 2025 ABEL won

Masaki Kashiwa, Japanese mathematician, received the ABEL Award for this year, which aspires to be an equation for the Nobel Prize in Mathematics. Dr. Kashiara’s abstract worked very algebra, engineering and differential equations in sudden ways.

The Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Messages, which runs the ABL award, announced honor on Wednesday morning.

“First of all, he solved some open guesses – the difficult problems that existed,” said Helj Holden, Chairman of the Awards Committee. “Secondly, it has opened new ways, and linking the areas that were not known to be connected before. This is something that always surprises mathematicians.”

Mathematics uses communications between the various fields of mathematics to address rebel problems, allowing them to reformulate these problems in the concepts they understand better.

Dr. Holden said that this made Dr. Kashiara, 78, from Kyoto University, “very important in many different mathematics.”

But were Dr. Kashiara’s work to solve the problems of the real world?

“No, nothing,” said Dr. Kashiara in an interview.

Honor is accompanied by 7.5 million Norwegian Kroner, or about 700,000 dollars.

Unlike the Nobel Prize, who often was surprised by the phone calls in the middle of the night immediately before the announcement of honor, Dr. Kashiara knew his honor for a week.

The Norwegian Academy informs the beneficiaries of the ABEL Award with Russes similar to that used to publish a sudden birthday party on an unexpected person. “My director of my institute told me that there is a meeting to enlarge at four in the afternoon, and please attend.”

On the remote video call, he did not recognize many faces. “There were many non -Japanese people at the zoom meeting, and I wonder what was happening,” said Dr. Kashiara.

Marit Westergard, Secretary -General of the Norwegian Academy, presented herself and told Dr. Kashiara that he had been chosen for the year for the year.

Congratulations, she said.

Dr. Kashiara, who was facing a problem with his internet connection, was initially confused. He said: “I do not completely understand what I said.”

When his Japanese colleagues repeated the news in Japanese, Dr. Cashriara said: “This is not what I expected at all. I am very surprised and honorable.”

He grew up in Japan in the post -war years, Dr. Kashiara was withdrawn to mathematics. Remember a common Japanese mathematics problem known as Tsurukamizan, which is translated as a “leverage and turtle account”.

The problem states: “There are cranes and weapons. The number of heads is x and the number of legs is Y. How many cranes and turtles exist? (For example, for 21 heads and 54 legs, the answer is 15 cranes and six turtles.)

This is a simple problem in algebra similar to what students are in middle school. But Dr. Kashiara was younger when he faced the problem and read an encyclopedia to learn how to reach the answer. “I was a child, so I can’t remember, but I think I was six years old,” he said.

At the college, a symposium was attended by Micio Sato, Japanese mathematics scientist, and was fascinated by the pioneering Sato work in what is now known as compulsory analysis.

“The analysis, which was described by inequality,” said Dr. Kashiara. “Something bigger or something smaller than the other.” Algebra deals with equality, and resolves equations for some unknown amount. “Sato wanted to bring the world of equality in the analysis.”

Phenomena in the real world are described with real numbers such as 1, 4/3 and PI. There is also what is known as fictional numbers such as IIt is the square root of -1 numbers, and complex numbers, which are sums of real and imaginary numbers.

Real numbers are a sub -set of complex numbers. Dr. Kashiara said that the real world, which he described as sports functions for real numbers, is “surrounded by a complex world” that includes functions in complex numbers.

For some individual categories equations – points in which the answers turn indefinitely – looking at close behavior with complex numbers can sometimes provide insight. So “So Dr. Kashiara said:

It has been written – by hand, in Japanese – a master’s thesis using algebra to study partial differential equations, and develop techniques that he will use throughout his career.

Dr. Kashiara’s work also withdrew what is known as acting theory, which uses identical knowledge to help solve a problem. “Imagine that you have a personality drawn on the ground,” said Olivier Shevman, a mathematician at the University of Paris Saklai and the French National Center for Scientific Research. “Unfortunately, everything is covered with mud and all you can see is, for example, the 15 -degree sector of it.”

But if one knows that the number remains unchanged when rotating it by 15 degrees, one can rebuild it through successive sessions. Because of the symmetry, “I just need to know a small part in order to understand all,” said Dr. Shevman. “Acting theory allows you to do this in more complex situations.”

Another invention of Dr. Kashiara was called crystal rules. Inspired by statistical physics, which analyzes critical temperatures when materials change, such as when the ice melts into water. The complex crystal rules allowed, apparently the impossible accounts to be replaced by graphic drawings are much simpler than the heads connected to the lines.

“This purely consensual creature actually encodes a lot of information,” said Dr. Shevman. “I have opened a completely new field of research.”

However, crystalline crystals are completely different from the excellent gemstones that most people believe as crystals.

“Perhaps Crystal is not a good word,” Dr. Kashiara admitted.

Dr. Holden said that Dr. Kashiara’s work was difficult to clarify for non -exciting, because he was more abstract than the work of some of the ABEL award.

For example, Michelle Talgrand’s research, last year, studied randomness in the universe such as ocean waves, and the work of Luis Cavarily, which was honored two years ago, can be applied to phenomena such as ice melting.

Dr. Kashiara’s work is similar to linking many abstract ideas of mathematics in more abstract groups, mathematicians who address a variety of problems.

“I think it is not easy,” said Dr. Kashiara. “I’m sorry.”

Dr. Holden referred to a specific work, in which Dr. Cashriara concluded the existence of crystalline rules, as a “theoretical masterpiece”, with 14 steps of induction, using reasoning to prove a series of assurances repeatedly.

Dr. Holden said: “He has one solution by solving others, and they are all linked.” “And if one of them falls, the whole thing is falling. So he is able to combine them in a very deep and smart way.”

But Dr. Holden said he could not provide a simple explanation of proof. He said: “This is difficult.” “I can see the 14 steps.”

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