The Abel Prize is an international prize presented annually by the King of Norway to one or more outstanding mathematicians. The prize is named after Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel (1802–1829). It has often been described as the "mathematician's Nobel prize" and is among the most prestigious awards in mathematics. It comes with a monetary award of six million kroner, which is approx. (2012) 1.06 million US dollars.

The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters annually declares the winner of the Abel Prize after selection by a committee of five international mathematicians. The committee is headed by Ragni Piene. The International Mathematical Union and the European Mathematical Society nominate members of the Abel Committee. The amount of money that comes with the prize is usually close to US$ 1 million, similar to the Nobel Prizes, which are awarded in Sweden and Norway and do not have a category for mathematics. Norway gave the prize an initial funding of NOK 200,000,000 (about US$23,000,000) in 2001.

Sir Andrew John Wiles, KBE, FRS (born 11 April 1953) is a British mathematician and a Royal Society Research Professor at Oxford University, specializing in number theory. He is most famous for proving Fermat's Last Theorem.

Wiles is the son of Maurice Frank Wiles (1923–2005), the Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford and Patricia Wiles (née Mowll). His father worked as the Chaplain at Ridley Hall, Cambridge, for the years 1952–55. Wiles was born in Cambridge, England, in 1953, and he attended King's College School, Cambridge, and The Leys School, Cambridge.

Wiles discovered Fermat's Last Theorem on his way home from school when he was 10 years old. He stopped by his local library where he found a book about the theorem. Puzzled by the fact that the statement of the theorem was so easy that he, a ten-year old, could understand it, he decided to be the first person to prove it. However, he soon realized that his knowledge of mathematics was too small, so he abandoned his childhood dream, until 1986, when he heard that Ribet had proved Serre's ε-conjecture and therefore established a link between Fermat's Last Theorem and the Taniyama–Shimura conjecture.

Endre Szemerédi (Hungarian pronunciation: [ˈɛndrɛ ˈsɛmɛreːdi]; born August 21, 1940) is a Hungarian-Americanmathematician, working in the field of combinatorics and theoretical computer science. He has been the State of New Jersey Professor of computer science at Rutgers University since 1986.

Szemerédi has won numerous prizes in mathematics and science, including, most notably, the Abel Prize in 2012. He has also made a number of key discoveries in combinatorics and computer science, including Szemerédi's theorem, the Szemerédi regularity lemma, the Erdős–Szemerédi theorem, the Hajnal–Szemerédi theorem and the Szemerédi–Trotter theorem.

Szemerédi was born in Budapest, studied in Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest and received his PhD from Moscow State University. His adviser was the late mathematician Israel Gelfand.

Szemerédi has been the State of New Jersey Professor of computer science at Rutgers University since 1986. He has held visiting positions at Stanford University (1974), McGill University (1980), the University of South Carolina (1981–1983) and the University of Chicago (1985–1986).