Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ

MATHEMATICAL physics dominated the International Congress of Math ematicians
which closed in Kyoto, Japan, last week. Three of the four winners of the
Fields Medal, mathematics’ answer to the Nobel Prize, were mathematical
physicists.

Four thousand attended the congress, the largest ever gathering of mathematicians.
As predicted in New Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ (This Week, 18 August), Fields Medals were
won by Vaughan Jones from New Zealand, Shigefumi Mori from Japan and Edward
Witten of the US. Vladimir Drinfield from the Soviet Union won the fourth
medal.

Jones, Witten and Drinfield have all made their reputations in mathematical
physics. Jones’s success in classifying ‘knots’ and Drinfield’s work on
quantum groups shook up quantum physics in the 1980s. As the originator
of string theory, the most influential explanation of particle physics in
the past 10 years, Witten is the inspiration for thousands of research papers
in mathematics.

Jones’ theory of knots also found important applications in the study
of the means by which DNA replicates.

Mori’s medal, a rare success for the Japanese, made front page news
in his home country. An expert in algebraic geometry, Mori recently completed
a decade-long mathematical study concerned with three-dimensional surfaces.