N.I. Lobachevsky medal and prize

Lobachevsky Medal and Prize

The N.I. Lobachevsky Medal and Prize "For Outstanding Work in Fundamental and Applied Mathematics" is an award given by Kazan Federal University once every two years to encourage scientists for scientific work, scientific discoveries and inventions that are important for science and practice in the field of fundamental and applied mathematics

The history of the Lobachevsky Medal and Prize

The initiative to award the prize was timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of N.I. Lobachevsky’s birth and belongs to A.V. Vasiliev, the chairman of the Kazan Physics and Mathematics Society, closely associated with the Kazan State University, where Lobachevsky was a professor and rector. The Kazan Physics and Mathematics Society assembled an organizing committee of more than one hundred members (more than 50 of whom were foreign scientists), which declared a large-scale subscription to the Lobachevsky capital. The collected funds were used to restore the tombstone on the scientist’s grave and to create a monument to Lobachevsky opposite Kazan University.

At the time of the establishment of the prize in 1895, the remaining principal capital amounted to 6,000 rubles in gold, and a prize of 500 rubles was paid out of the interest on it every 3 years. At the first three awards, the person who wrote a critical review of the nominee’s work was awarded the N. I. Lobachevsky gold medal.

Alexander Vasilievich Vasiliev
Russian mathematician and public figure, emeritus professor

1897 — Lee Sophus , for work on the theory of transformation groups; the gold medal was awarded to the referee Felix Klein.
1900 — Killing, Wilhelm , for work on multidimensional non-Euclidean spaces and the theory of transformation groups; the gold medal was awarded to the reviewer Friedrich Engel.
1904 — Hilbert David , for work on the foundations of geometry; gold medal awarded to reviewer Henri Poincaré.
1906 — No prize awarded. Beppo Levi's submitted work received an honorable mention.
1909 — Schlesinger Ludwig (awarded in 1912).
1912 — Schur Friedrich , for the monograph "Fundamentals of Geometry".

In 1918, Lobachevsky's capital was "sequestered" (that is, confiscated), but in 1925, at the request of the Kazan Physics and Mathematics Society, the People's Commissariat of Education included the prize in its budget. Nevertheless, over the next 20 years, the prize was awarded only twice.

1927 — Weyl Hermann (for the monograph "Space, Time, Matter" and works
on group theory; reviewed by D. Hilbert).
1937 — Elie Cartan , for a series of works on the theory of Lie groups (reviewed by I. Levi-Civita).
1937 — Wagner Viktor Vladimirovich (special prize for young Soviet mathematicians; for work expanding the ideas of N.I. Lobachevsky).
1937 — Vladimir Aleksandrovich Fok (honorary review).

After the Great Patriotic War, by the Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR of January 29, 1947 "On Prizes Named after the Great Russian Scientist N.I. Lobachevsky" it was decided to establish two prizes, an international one and an incentive one for Soviet scientists, the awarding of which was entrusted to the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences. By the Resolution of the USSR Academy of Sciences of March 20, 1947, a commission for awarding the relevant prizes was created under the Department of Physical and Mathematical Sciences of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

1951 — Alexandrov, Alexander Danilovich (main prize).
1951 — Efimov, Nikolai Vladimirovich (encouragement award).

Building of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1947

Subsequently, by the decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR of June 23, 1956, instead of two prizes, one was established, with a frequency of awarding once every three years.

On August 3, 1956, the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences decided to award the prize to Soviet and foreign scientists for the best work in geometry, primarily non-Euclidean. In 1959, the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences issued a resolution defining the basic principles for awarding the prizes, according to which personal prizes began to be awarded once every three years and each year it was possible to award the prize to a team of up to three nominees. On August 16, 1963, the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences decided to subordinate the commission for awarding the N. I. Lobachevsky Prize to the Department of Mathematics of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Since 1966, the prize has been awarded in accordance with the standard regulations on gold medals and prizes of the USSR Academy of Sciences named after outstanding scientists. The date of the award of the prize is December 1 (N. I. Lobachevsky's birthday).

1959 — Pogorelov Alexey Vasilievich
1966 — Pontryagin Lev Semyonovich
1969 — Hopf Heinz
1972 — Alexandrov Pavel Sergeevich
1977 — Delone Boris Nikolaevich
1981 — Novikov Sergey Petrovich
1984 — Busemann Herbert
1986 — Kolmogorov Andrey Nikolaevich
1990 — Friedrich Hirzebruch
1992 — Arnold Vladimir Igorevich

On June 8, 1993, the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences approved the Regulation on gold medals and prizes named after outstanding scientists awarded by the Russian Academy of Sciences. In accordance with it, the N.I. Lobachevsky Prize is awarded once every three years "For outstanding results in the field of geometry."

1996 — Margulis Grigory Alexandrovich
2000 — Reshetnyak Yuri Grigorievich

Lobachevsky Medal

N.I. Lobachevsky medal, awarded by the Academic Council of Kazan State University

By the Resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of the USSR of June 18, 1991, No. 380, in commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the birth of the discoverer of non-Euclidean geometry, Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky, a medal was established in honor of the outstanding scientist. Since 1992, according to the Regulation on the procedure for awarding the N.I. Lobachevsky medal, "the medal is awarded by the Academic Council of Kazan State University once every five years to Soviet and foreign scientists for outstanding work in the field of geometry." The competition is held simultaneously and jointly with the competition for the N.I. Lobachevsky Prize of the Russian Academy of Sciences; the jury of the competition includes representatives of the Russian Academy of Sciences and employees of Kazan University. Unlike the tradition of 1897-1903 (when 4 medals were awarded for 3 ceremonies), the medal is awarded not to the reviewers of the submitted works, but directly to their authors.
As of 2010, 4 medals have also been awarded in 3 ceremonies (1992, 1997, 2002).

1992 — Norden Alexander Petrovich , for the creation of the normalization method and work on the theory of non-Euclidean spaces.
1997 — Gromov Mikhail Leonidovich , for a series of works on the theory of immersions and the theory of hyperbolic groups.
1997 — Komrakov Boris Petrovich , for research in the theory of Lie groups and the theory of homogeneous spaces.
2002 — Chern Shiing-Shen , for a series of works on differential and algebraic geometry.

In 2017, the format of the N. I. Lobachevsky Medal and Prize was changed. Now the N. I. Lobachevsky Medal and the corresponding cash prize of 75,000 (seventy-five thousand) US dollars are awarded once every two years by Kazan Federal University for outstanding work in the field of fundamental and applied mathematics.

2017 — Richard Schoen, for his work on positive energy in general relativity, in particular his solution to the Yamabe problem on compact manifolds.
2019 — Daniel Wise, for his work on problems in differential and metric geometry.
2021 — Sabitov Ijad Khakovich, for work on metric properties of surfaces and polyhedra.
2023 — Ershov Yuri Leonidovich, for a series of works on the development of topology for discrete mathematics, for the monograph "Topology for Discrete Mathematics".

Awarding of the laureate of the international
Lobachevsky Medal and Prize for 2023 — Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Yuri Leonidovich Ershov,
December 1, 2023, the Imperial Hall of the KFU