Two US mathematicians win 'maths Nobel' for 2015

US mathematician John F. Nash Jr. and Canada-born American national Louis Nirenberg have been named the joint winners of the Abel Prize for 2015 for their contributions to mathematical sciences, the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters said.

The two mathematicians won the prize, dubbed the maths Nobel, "for striking and seminal contributions to the theory of nonlinear partial differential equations and its applications to geometric analysis," Xinhua news agency reported citing a press release issued by the academy on Wednesday.

Nash, 86, and Nirenberg, 90, will receive the financial award of six million Norwegian kroners (about $765,000) from Norway's King Harald during a formal ceremony in Oslo on May 19.

Nash spent his career at Princeton University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology while Nirenberg worked at New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, the press release said, adding that even though they did not formally collaborate on any papers, they influenced each other greatly during the 1950s and the results of their work are felt more strongly today than ever before.

"Their breakthroughs have developed into versatile and robust techniques that have become essential tools for the study of nonlinear partial differential equations. Their impact can be felt in all branches of the theory," the Abel committee said in a citation.

"Far from being confined to the solutions of the problems for which they were devised, the results proven by Nash and Nirenberg have become very useful tools and have found tremendous applications in further contexts," it said.

Outside mathematics, Nash is best known for a paper he wrote about game theory, the mathematics of decision-making, which ultimately won him the 1994 Nobel Prize for economics and features strongly in the 2001 film about him, "A Beautiful Mind".

Nirenberg, who was born, raised and schooled in Canada, has had one of the longest and most feted careers in mathematics, having produced important results right up till his 70s.

The Abel prize has been awarded annually since 2003 in memory of the Norwegian mathematics genius Niels Henrik Abel.