This year, the Abel Prize — the field’s highest honor — has been awarded to Masaki Kashiwara, prolific Japanese mathematician ...

The Abel Prize recognizes achievements in mathematics at any stage of a mathematician’s career, unlike the Fields Medal, another international prize in math given only to mathematicians younger ...

Masaki Kashiwara received the honor, often regarded as the Nobel Prize in mathematics, for work that combined different mathematical fields to solve challenging problems.

Named after Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel, the prize is considered to be equivalent to a Nobel Prize in the field of mathematics.