In keeping with this objective, the Abel Fund has promoted its activities along the following main lines:

The Abel Prize

This primarily includes the actual awarding of the prize and associated national as well as international events.

The Abel Symposia

One or two Abel Symposia are organised each year. The topic may be selected broadly in the area of pure and applied mathematics. A topic of historical or pedagogical importance may also be chosen. The symposia are to be on a very high level academically speaking and serve to build bridges between national and international research communities. The Norwegian Mathematical Societyis responsible for the events. The 2011 Abel Symposium "Algebras, quivers and representations" will take place June 20-23, in Balestrand, Norway.

Activities aimed at young people

This is a high-priority area. The Abel Board has appointed a separate committee for young people that is responsible for activities aimed at this target group.

Each year two major mathematics contests are organized in Norway, the Niels Henrik Abels Mathematics Contest and KappAbel. Both receive financial support from the Abel Fund.

The Niels Henrik Abel Mathematics Contest, usually just called the Abel Contest, is for upper secondary school pupils and is organised by the Norwegian Mathematical Society. Under the name HRH the Crown Prince's Prize, this is a competition with traditions going back to the founding of the Norwegian Mathematical Society in 1918. Due to low participation it was discontinued in the mid 1970s, but was re-established under its present name in connection with the sesquicentenary of Abel's death in 1979. After preliminary rounds and finals, the six best contestants get to participate in the International Math Olympics (IMO).

KappAbel was first held in Froland in 1998 and was then a competition for pupils in lower secondary school in Aust-Agder County. KappAbel quickly went national and is today a competition for school classes in the Nordic countries. In Norway the competition is organized by the KappAbel Foundation - established by Froland Municipality and the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters - in collaboration with the University of Agder in Kristiansand.

Bernt Michael Holmboe's Memorial Prize

The Bernt Michael Holmboe's Memorial Prize, established in 2005, has since been awarded annually for the promotion of excellence in teaching mathematics. The prize will be given to one or more mathematics teachers or a mathematics department in a Norwegian primary or secondary school. B.M. Holmboe was the teacher who discovered Abel's prodigious talents and inspired him to further studies.

Norwegian Mathematics Council will be in charge of selecting the winners, and the prize of NOK 100,000, as well as expenses connected with work on the prize, is financed by the Abel Fund.

International collaboration

The Abel Fund supports the creation of the Ramanujan Prize for young mathematicians from developing countries. The prize has been established in the name of Srinivasa Ramanujan by the Abdus Salman International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in cooperation with International Mathematical Union (IMU). The prize money is donated by the Abel Fund. The Ramanujan Prize will be awarded annually to a researcher from a developing country less than 45 years of age at the time of the award, who has conducted outstanding research in a developing country. The Ramanujan Prize carries a cash award of USD 15.000.

Marcelo Viana from Brazil received the first Ramanujan Prize in 2005. The 2010 Ramanujan Prize will be awarded to the Chinese mathematician Yuguang Shi on 10 May 2011 at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy.

Helge Holden
Chairman of the Board, Niels Henrik Abels Memorial Fund

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