The Nobel of Numbers

John Charles Fields is a little-known Canadian. He deserves to be better known. Turbulent Times in Mathematics: The Life of J.C. Fields and the History of the Fields Medal, a fine biography and account of his career and work by Elaine McKinnon Riehm and Frances Hoffman, may help to rectify that situation.

Fields is best known today among the world’s mathematicians for having established an award that has taken the place of a Nobel Prize for mathematics. No one really knows why Nobel overlooked mathematics when he set up the prizes in his will. There are rumours, but no real evidence as to Nobel’s reason. Fields, through his prominence in North America and Europe, saw the need and opportunity and set out to fill it. The medal he created, officially known as the International Medal for Outstanding Discoveries in Mathematics, was to be awarded every four years, to two, three or four mathematicians not over the age of 40, at the quadrennial conference of the...