John Willard Milnor

From the Abel Prize:

"John Milnor’s profound ideas and fundamental discoveries have largely shaped the mathematical landscape of the second half of the 20th century…All of Milnor’s work display features of great research: profound insights, vivid imagination, striking surprises and supreme beauty ... Numerous mathematical concepts, results and conjectures are named after him. In the literature we find for instance Milnor exotic spheres, Milnor fibration, Milnor number, Milnor-Thurston kneading theory, and Milnor Conjectures in knot theory, K-theory, combinatorial group theory, and holomorphic dynamics."

Abel Prize Laureate, 2011

Fields Medalist, 1962