If you want to know what’s true, then math is a pretty good place to start, says Abel Prize winner Dennis P. Sullivan

On March 23, the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters announced their decision to award this yea

On March 23, the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters announced their decision to award this year’s Abel Prize to Dennis Parnell Sullivan, American mathematician who is now at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, U.S.. The Abel Prize is a top honour in mathematics, being similar to the Nobel prize for the sciences in being awarded for major contribution to a field of math. Named after the Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel, the prize was instituted by the Norwegian government in 2002. In this interview, Prof. Sullivan talks to The Hindu about his interest in mathematics, early influences and more. 

The second year of college, because I didn't know mathematics existed as a profession until then.

I was in chemical engineering [at Rice University, Texas]. But at that university, all the science students, electrical engineers, and everything took math, physics and chemistry. In the second year, when we did complex variables, one day, the Professor drew a picture of a kidney-shaped swimming pool, and a round swimming pool. And he said, you could deform this kidney-shaped swimming pool into the round one. At each point, the distortion is by scaling. A little triangle at this point goes to a similar triangle at the other point. At every point, that's true. We have a formula for the mapping, because we're taking calculus, and we had a notation for discussing it, which we have been studying. But this was like a geometric picture. This mapping was essentially unique. And this was, the nature of this statement was totally different from any math statement I've ever seen before. It was, like, general, deep, and wow! And true! So then, within a few weeks, I changed my major to math.

I was able to use that theorem in the 1980s. This was serious.

I used this wonderful structure in later research… especially, during a ten-year struggle proving mathematically, by 1990, a numerical universality discovered by physicists in the mid-1970s.

Well I don't like names, I like the theorems though! (Laughs) No, no, I'm just kidding.

I proved something that physicists discovered, I use the theory behind it to prove something called the universality of the geometry of a certain dynamical process that involved renormalization, as in the physics use of the term in quantum field theory. It was sort of in that genre of ideas, but it was a it was a truly math statement. It could be formulated mathematically, and yet the physicists computed this