Simons Investigator Simon Brendle Awarded Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics

The Breakthrough Prize Foundation has named Simon Brendle the winner of the 2024 Breakthrough Prize in mathematics for his work in the field of differential geometry.

Brendle is a professor at Columbia University and a 2017 Simons Investigator in Mathematics.

“Mathematician Simon Brendle has contributed a series of remarkable leaps in differential geometry, a field that uses the tools of calculus to study curves, surfaces and spaces,” the Breakthrough Prize Foundation wrote in its award announcement. “Many of his results concern the shape of surfaces, as well as manifolds in higher dimensions than those we experience in everyday life.”

His numerous achievements in geometry include results on the Yamabe compactness conjecture, the differentiable sphere theorem, the Lawson conjecture and the Ilmanen conjecture, as well as singularity formation in the mean curvature flow, the Yamabe flow and the Ricci flow.

Brendle earned his doctorate from Tübingen University in 2001 and later worked as a professor at Stanford University before joining Columbia’s faculty. He has received numerous awards and recognitions for his work, including the 2012 EMS Prize, the 2014 Bôcher Prize and the 2017 Fermat Prize.