The Abel Prize 2008--2012 (Q2392071)

This is the second in a planned permanent series of books presenting the Abel Prize Laureates for consecutive periods of time. The present volume includes the prize winners for the years 2008-2012. They were John G. Thompson and Jacques Tits (for 2008), Mikhail Gromov (2009), John T. Tate (2010), John W. Milnor (2011), and Endre Szemerédi (2012). So far no woman-mathematician has been awarded the Abel prize while the first Fields medal went to a woman at the Seoul ICM in 2014 (Maryam Mirzakhani). The sections for each mathematician are introduced by autobiographical reflections, followed by one or several articles written by fellow mathematicians (among them prominent ones as Fields Medalist Timothy Gowers) analyzing the laureate's works. The sections are completed by lists of publications and short cvs. Most of the articles are necessarily rather technical, belonging to the respective topics in group theory, class field theory, differential manifolds, and combinatorics. The book is introduced with a longer paper by the historian Kim G. Helsvig, which discusses the foundation of the Abel Prize and the question of its relation to the missing Nobel prize in mathematics. The collection concludes with an historical essay written by the mathematician from Trondheim, Christian Skau on ``Abel and the Theory of Algebraic Equations.'' This essay is ``stimulated by the letter Abel sent to Crelle on September 25, 1828).'' The letter is published as facsimile with transcription plus translation from German into English. The voluminous collection which has many attractive portraits of the mathematicians described can be highly recommended.