Latest news with #MasakiKashiwara
The Mainichi
21-05-2025
- Science
- The Mainichi
Abel laureate Kashiwara says new discoveries make 'beautiful' math
OSLO (Kyodo) -- Japanese mathematician Masaki Kashiwara, who received the prestigious Abel Prize this year, has said his love for "beautiful" math sustained him through his more than half-century-long research career. Becoming the first Japanese recipient of the award, considered the Nobel Prize for mathematics, the 78-year-old professor emeritus at Kyoto University's Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences said in a recent interview he felt the beauty of math "the moment I proved something new." He also said he "deeply felt" the high value Norway attaches to math education through festivities related to the award, bestowed by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, while questioning his own country's approach to math education. In announcing the Abel Prize recipient in March, the academy said it recognized Kashiwara "for his fundamental contributions to algebraic analysis and representation theory," among other achievements, calling him "a true mathematical visionary." His lifelong passion has not dimmed even though his speed of research has "slowed" due to his age, Kashiwara, who now serves as project professor at the Kyoto University institute, said. With the development of the internet drastically changing methods of research, the professor recalled his past days when "it was difficult to find out even what was going on overseas" and said now he is tackling challenging problems by exchanging views online with three mathematicians in South Korea. Kashiwara said he is worried that Japan's system of university entrance examinations and a perception that math is "a memorization subject" could create further aversion to math and reduce students' motivation to pursue careers in the field. He said he sees potential in China, which is proactively attracting willing specialists and where the publishing of scientific papers is increasing. Born in Ibaraki Prefecture, northeast of Tokyo, Kashiwara earned a master's degree from the University of Tokyo before obtaining a doctorate from Kyoto University. He has been project professor at Kyoto University's Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences since 2010. Under the guidance of his mentor, Mikio Sato, a professor emeritus at Kyoto University, Kashiwara developed the theory of D-modules for his master's thesis in 1970, a framework that has become a fundamental tool in many branches of mathematics. Kashiwara and his colleagues proved the Riemann-Hilbert correspondence, a major problem in mathematics for many years, for holonomic D-modules, around 1980. The Abel Prize award ceremony was held in Norway on Tuesday, with Kashiwara receiving prize money of 7.5 million Norwegian krone ($733,000). It was established in 2002 in connection with the 200th anniversary of the birth of Niels Henrik Abel, a pioneering Norwegian mathematician.
Kyodo News
21-05-2025
- Science
- Kyodo News
Abel laureate Masaki Kashiwara says new discoveries make "beautiful" math
KYODO NEWS - 1 hour ago - 14:12 | All, Japan Japanese mathematician Masaki Kashiwara, who received the prestigious Abel Prize this year, has said his love for "beautiful" math sustained him through his more than half-century-long research career. Becoming the first Japanese recipient of the award, considered the Nobel Prize for mathematics, the 78-year-old professor emeritus at Kyoto University's Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences said in a recent interview he felt the beauty of math "the moment I proved something new." He also said he "deeply felt" the high value Norway attaches to math education through festivities related to the award, bestowed by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, while questioning his own country's approach to math education. In announcing the Abel Prize recipient in March, the academy said it recognized Kashiwara "for his fundamental contributions to algebraic analysis and representation theory," among other achievements, calling him "a true mathematical visionary." His lifelong passion has not dimmed even though his speed of research has "slowed" due to his age, Kashiwara, who now serves as project professor at the Kyoto University institute, said. With the development of the internet drastically changing methods of research, the professor recalled his past days when "it was difficult to find out even what was going on overseas" and said now he is tackling challenging problems by exchanging views online with three mathematicians in South Korea. Kashiwara said he is worried that Japan's system of university entrance examinations and a perception that math is "a memorization subject" could create further aversion to math and reduce students' motivation to pursue careers in the field. He said he sees potential in China, which is proactively attracting willing specialists and where the publishing of scientific papers is increasing. Born in Ibaraki Prefecture, northeast of Tokyo, Kashiwara earned a master's degree from the University of Tokyo before obtaining a doctorate from Kyoto University. He has been project professor at Kyoto University's Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences since 2010. Under the guidance of his mentor, Mikio Sato, a professor emeritus at Kyoto University, Kashiwara developed the theory of D-modules for his master's thesis in 1970, a framework that has become a fundamental tool in many branches of mathematics. Kashiwara and his colleagues proved the Riemann-Hilbert correspondence, a major problem in mathematics for many years, for holonomic D-modules, around 1980. The Abel Prize award ceremony was held in Norway on Tuesday, with Kashiwara receiving prize money of 7.5 million Norwegian krone ($733,000). It was established in 2002 in connection with the 200th anniversary of the birth of Niels Henrik Abel, a pioneering Norwegian mathematician. Related coverage: Kyoto Univ. professor becomes 1st Japanese to win Abel Prize in math
Kyodo News
21-05-2025
- Science
- Kyodo News
Abel laureate Masaki Kashiwara says new discoveries make "beautiful" math
KYODO NEWS - 4 minutes ago - 14:12 | All, Japan Japanese mathematician Masaki Kashiwara, who received the prestigious Abel Prize this year, has said his love for "beautiful" math sustained him through his more than half-century-long research career. Becoming the first Japanese recipient of the award, considered the Nobel Prize for mathematics, the 78-year-old professor emeritus at Kyoto University's Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences said in a recent interview he felt the beauty of math "the moment I proved something new." He also said he "deeply felt" the high value Norway attaches to math education through festivities related to the award, bestowed by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, while questioning his own country's approach to math education. In announcing the Abel Prize recipient in March, the academy said it recognized Kashiwara "for his fundamental contributions to algebraic analysis and representation theory," among other achievements, calling him "a true mathematical visionary." His lifelong passion has not dimmed even though his speed of research has "slowed" due to his age, Kashiwara, who now serves as project professor at the Kyoto University institute, said. With the development of the internet drastically changing methods of research, the professor recalled his past days when "it was difficult to find out even what was going on overseas" and said now he is tackling challenging problems by exchanging views online with three mathematicians in South Korea. Kashiwara said he is worried that Japan's system of university entrance examinations and a perception that math is "a memorization subject" could create further aversion to math and reduce students' motivation to pursue careers in the field. He said he sees potential in China, which is proactively attracting willing specialists and where the publishing of scientific papers is increasing. Born in Ibaraki Prefecture, northeast of Tokyo, Kashiwara earned a master's degree from the University of Tokyo before obtaining a doctorate from Kyoto University. He has been project professor at Kyoto University's Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences since 2010. Under the guidance of his mentor, Mikio Sato, a professor emeritus at Kyoto University, Kashiwara developed the theory of D-modules for his master's thesis in 1970, a framework that has become a fundamental tool in many branches of mathematics. Kashiwara and his colleagues proved the Riemann-Hilbert correspondence, a major problem in mathematics for many years, for holonomic D-modules, around 1980. The Abel Prize award ceremony was held in Norway on Tuesday, with Kashiwara receiving prize money of 7.5 million Norwegian krone ($733,000). It was established in 2002 in connection with the 200th anniversary of the birth of Niels Henrik Abel, a pioneering Norwegian mathematician. Related coverage: Kyoto Univ. professor becomes 1st Japanese to win Abel Prize in math
Observer
01-04-2025
- Science
- Observer
Abel Prize awarded to Japanese mathematician who abstracted abstractions
Masaki Kashiwara, a Japanese mathematician, received this year's Abel Prize, which aspires to be the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in math. Kashiwara's highly abstract work combined algebra, geometry and differential equations in surprising ways. The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, which manages the Abel Prize, announced the honor Wednesday. 'First of all, he has solved some open conjectures — hard problems that have been around,' said Helge Holden, chair of the prize committee. 'And second, he has opened new avenues, connecting areas that were not known to be connected before. This is something that always surprises mathematicians.' Mathematicians use connections between different areas of math to tackle recalcitrant problems, allowing them to recast those problems into concepts they better understand. That has made Kashiwara, 78, of Kyoto University, 'very important in many different areas of mathematics,' Holden said. But have uses been found for Kashiwara's work in solving concrete, real-world problems? 'No, nothing,' Kashiwara said in an interview. The honor is accompanied by 7.5 million Norwegian kroner (about $700,000). Unlike Nobel Prize laureates, who are frequently surprised with middle-of-the-night phone calls just before the honors are publicly announced, Kashiwara had known of his honor for a week. The Norwegian academy informs Abel Prize recipients with ruses similar to those used to spring a surprise birthday party. 'The director of my institute told me that there is a Zoom meeting at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, and please attend,' Kashiwara recalled in an interview. On the video teleconference call, he did not recognize many of the faces. 'There were many non-Japanese people in the Zoom meeting, and I'm wondering what's going on,' Kashiwara said. Marit Westergaard, secretary-general of the Norwegian academy, introduced herself and told Kashiwara that he had been chosen for the year's Abel. 'Congratulations,' she said. Kashiwara, who was having trouble with his internet connection, was initially confused. 'I don't completely understand what you said,' he said. When his Japanese colleagues repeated the news in Japanese, Kashiwara said: 'That is not what I expected at all. I'm very surprised and honored.' Growing up in Japan in the postwar years, Kashiwara was drawn to math. He recalled a common Japanese math problem known as tsurukamezan, which translates as the crane and turtle calculation. The problem states: 'There are cranes and turtles. The count of heads is X and the count of legs is Y. How many cranes and turtles are there?' (For example, for 21 heads and 54 legs, the answer is 15 cranes and six turtles.) This is a simple algebra word problem similar to what students solve in middle school. But Kashiwara was much younger when he encountered it and read an encyclopedia to learn how to come up with the answer. 'I was a kid, so I can't remember, but I think I was 6 years old,' he said. In college, he attended a seminar by Mikio Sato, a Japanese mathematician, and was fascinated by Sato's groundbreaking work in what is now known as algebraic analysis. 'Analysis, that is described by the inequality,' Kashiwara said. 'Something is bigger or something is smaller than the other.' Algebra deals with equalities, solving equations for some unknown quantity. 'Sato wanted to bring the equality world into analysis.' Phenomena in the real world are described by real numbers like 1, –4/3 and pi. There are also what are known as imaginary numbers like i , which is the square root of –1, and complex numbers, which are sums of real and imaginary numbers. Real numbers are a subset of complex numbers. The real world, described by the mathematical functions of real numbers, 'is surrounded by a complex world' involving functions of complex numbers, Kashiwara said. For some equations with singularities — points where the answers turn into infinity — looking at the nearby behavior with complex numbers can sometimes provide insight. 'So the inference from the complex world is reflected to the singularities in the real world,' Kashiwara said. He wrote — by hand — a master's thesis using algebra to study partial differential equations, developing techniques that he would employ throughout his career. Kashiwara's work also pulled in what is known as representation theory, which uses knowledge of symmetries to help solve a problem. 'Imagine you have a figure drawn on the floor,' said Olivier Schiffmann, a mathematician at the University of Paris-Saclay and the French National Center for Scientific Research. 'Unfortunately, it is all covered in mud and all you can see is, say, a 15-degree sector of it.' But if one knows that the figure remains unchanged when rotated by 15 degrees, one can reconstruct it through successive rotations. Because of the symmetry, 'I only need to know a small part in order to understand the whole,' Schiffman said. 'Representation theory allows you to do that in much more complex situations.' Another invention of Kashiwara's was called crystal bases. He drew inspiration from statistical physics, which analyzes critical temperatures when materials change phases, like when ice melts to water. The crystal bases allowed complex, seemingly impossible calculations to be replaced with much simpler graphs of vertices connected by lines. 'This purely combinatorial object in fact encodes a lot of information,' Schiffmann said. 'It opened up a whole new area of research.' Confusingly, however, the crystals of crystal bases are completely different from the sparkly faceted gemstones that most people think of as crystals. 'Perhaps crystal is not a good word,' Kashiwara admitted. Holden said Kashiwara's work was difficult to explain to non-mathematicians, because it was much more abstract than that of some earlier Abel prize laureates. For example, Michel Talagrand, last year's laureate, studied randomness in the universe like the heights of ocean waves, and the work of Luis Caffarelli, who was honored two years ago, can be applied to phenomena like the melting of a piece of ice. Kashiwara's work is more like tying together several abstract ideas of mathematics into more abstract combinations that are insightful to mathematicians tackling a variety of problems. 'I think it's not easy,' Kashiwara said. 'I'm sorry.' Holden pointed to one particular work, in which Kashiwara deduced the existence of crystal bases, as a 'masterpiece of a theorem,' with 14 steps of induction, using inference to recursively prove a series of assertions. 'He has to solve one by solving the others, and they're all connected,' Holden said. 'And if one falls, the whole thing falls. So he is able to combine them in a very deep and very clever way.' But Holden said he could not provide a simple explanation of the proof. 'That's hard,' he said. 'I can see the 14 steps.' This article originally appeared in
Japan Times
29-03-2025
- Science
- Japan Times
Masaki Kashiwara wins Abel Prize for mathematicians
The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters said Wednesday that this year's Abel Prize for mathematicians with distinguished achievements will be given to Masaki Kashiwara, making him the first Japanese to win the award. Kashiwara, 78, a specially appointed professor at Kyoto University's Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences, won the award for "his fundamental contributions to algebraic analysis and representation theory, in particular the development of the theory of D-modules and the discovery of crystal bases," the academy said. Masaki Kashiwara, a specially appointed professor at Kyoto University's Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences, won this year's Abel Prize. | Jiji "He has proven astonishing theorems with methods no one had imagined. He has been a true mathematical visionary," it said. The Abel Prize, often regarded as the Nobel Prize in mathematics, comes with a monetary award of 7.5 million Norwegian kroner ($710,000, ¥107 million). The prize ceremony is scheduled to take place in Oslo on May 20. Kashiwara contributed to the development of modern mathematics by building from the foundation the theory of D-modules, which is the central concept of algebraic analysis. In the 1980s, he greatly contributed to the development of various fields of modern mathematics, including solving the Riemann-Hilbert problem, which had been a pending issue among mathematicians since the early 20th century. He has received various awards, including the Japan Academy Prize in 1988 and the Chern Medal of the International Mathematical Union in 2018.
