What It Takes to Win the Highest Honor in Mathematics

The Fields Medal is the highest honor a mathematician can achieve. The esteemed award has been compared to the Nobel Prize for the field of math –- and there’s only one requirement to win.

The Fields Medal, first awarded at the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in 1936, has been awarded once every four years since 1950 to at most four people at a time, all under the age of 40.“It is the most prestigious award in mathematics,” Matheus Grasselli, deputy director of the The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences, told ABC News. “The only criterion is excellence.”

“It’s a little bit of folklore that the best discovery a mathematician makes is when they’re very young,” said Grasselli, “but the tradition is still in place.”

To be chosen as a recipient is a process that can last years, Grasselli said. The committee, a group of esteemed mathematicians kept anonymous until the results are announced, “solicits letters of support from the community as to why somebody has made a contribution that’s so important,” he added. “They analyze papers, analyze impact, analyze implications, and future relevance of work.”

So, what qualifies as a “contribution”? Simple. All you need to do is find a solution to a problem that has gone unsolved for hundreds of years, that no other mathematician to date has been able to solve.

“In mathematics there are things called open problems,” Fiona Dunbar, Lecturer in Faculty of Math at the University of Waterloo, told ABC News. “These are problems that have been around for hundreds of years and have never been solved. If someone comes along and solves it at such a young age, it’s a pretty big deal.”

Possibly the most famous open problem was Fermat's Last Theorem, which remained unsolved for more than 350 years.

The Fields Medal is by all accounts the most elite and prestigious honor in the field, and Maryam Mirzakhani, a Stanford professor of mathematics, made history on Tuesday when she became the first ever female recipient.

“It’s a breakthrough,” Dunbar said of the Mirzakhani’s achievement.

“It’s really exciting, it’s inspirational,” said Dunbar. “Obviously, seeing a role model like that is really important for the next generation of young women. When you study mathematics, a lot of the names you hear over and over again are men.”

Mirzakhani and the other three recipients, Dr. Artur Avila, Professor Manjul Bhargava, and Professor Martin Hairer will also be receiving a cash prize of 15,000 Canadian dollars along with the bragging rights.

In summation, go off and solve an unsolved mathematics problem, and in four years the Fields Medal may just be yours. The Goldbach Conjecture is still up for grabs.