OSLO: Srinivasa S.R. Varadhan, a professor at New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences since 1966, was on Thursday awarded the Abel Prize in Mathematics by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters for "his fundamental contributions to probability theory and in particular for creating a unified theory of large deviations," which the Academy characterised as "hugely influential" and lauded for its "great conceptual strength and ageless beauty."

He is expected to receive the Abel Prize from His Majesty, King Harald V of Norway, in Oslo on May 22nd. The honour is accompanied by a prize of $850,000.

This is the second time in three years that an NYU mathematician has been the recipient of the Abel Prize: in 2005, Professor Peter Lax of the Courant Institute was awarded the Abel.

Professor Srinivasa Varadhan, who is known as Raghu, is the Frank J. Gould Professor of Science and Professor of Mathematics at NYU's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. He first came to Courant as a post-doctoral fellow in 1963 and has spent his entire professional life there, serving two terms as its director (1980-1984 and 1992-1994).

NYU President John Sexton said, "We are so happy and proud of Raghu. Not only is he an outstanding scholar, he is also a kind and wonderful colleague, a devoted teacher, and an exemplary `University citizen,' serving with dedication and professionalism as director of the Courant Institute and on such bodies as the University Senate. This distinction is a well-deserved honour for a faculty member whose modesty and discretion are almost as great as his scholarly contributions."

Prof. Varadhan - a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Society and the Third World Academy of Sciences - has been the recipient of many awards and honours, including the Birkhoff Prize (1994), the Margaret and Herman Sokol Award of NYU's Faculty of Arts and Science (1995), and the American Mathematical Society's Leroy Steele Prize (1996), an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is a fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and the Indian Academy of Sciences. He received his B.Sc. Honours degree and M.A. from Madras University, and his Ph.D. from the Indian Statistical Institute in Calcutta.

In awarding the prize, the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters cited Prof. Varadhan's crucial work on probability theory. The Academy said of his development of his theory of large deviations that it "provides a unifying and efficient method for clarifying a rich variety of phenomena arising in complex stochastic systems, in fields as diverse as quantum field theory, statistical physics, population dynamics, econometrics and finance, and traffic engineering. It has also greatly expanded our ability to use computers to simulate and analyse the occurrence of rare events. Over the last four decades, the theory of large deviations has become a cornerstone of modern probability, both pure and applied."

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