Abel Prize

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 6 Million Kroner(currency of Norway)which is approx. 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 .
In August 2001, the Norwegian government announced that the prize would be awarded beginning in 2002, the 200th Anniversary of Abel's birth. The first prize was actually awarded in 2003.

Hungarian Mathematician Endre Szemerédi gets 2012 Abel Prize

 List of Winners from 2003

Year	Winner	Institution	Nationality	Citation
2003	Jean Pierre Serre	College de France	France	for playing a key role in shaping the modern form of many parts of mathematics, including topology, algebraic geometry and number theory
2004	Michael F Atiyah Isadore M Singer	University of Edinburg MIT	UK USA	for their discovery and proof of the index theorem, bringing together topology, geometry and analysis and their outstanding role in building new bridges between mathematics and theoretical physics
2005	Peter D Lax	Courant Institue NYU	Hungary/USA	for his groundbreaking contributions to the theory and application of partial differential equations and to the computation of their solutions
2006	Lennart Carleson	Kungliga Tekniska Hogskolan	Sweden	for his profound and seminal contributions to harmonic analysis and the theory of smooth dynamical systems”
2007	S R Srinivasa Vardhan	Courant Institute NYU	India/USA	for his fundamental contributions to Probability Theory and in particular for creating a unified Theory of Large  Deviation
2008	John G Thompson Jacques Tits	University of Florida College de France	USA Belgium/France	for their profound achievements in Algebra and in particular for shaping modern Group Theory
2009	Mikhail Gromov	IHES Courant Institute NYU	Russia/France	for his revolutionary contributions to geometry
2010	John T Tate	UT Austin	USA	for his vast and lasting impact on the Theory of Numbers
2011	John Milnor	Stony Brook University	USA	for pioneering discoveries in topology, geometry and algebra
2012	Endre Szemerédi	Alfred Renyi Institue And Rutgers University	Hungary	for his fundamental contributions to discrete mathematics and theoretical computer science and in recognition of the profound and lasting impact of these contributions on additive number theory and ergodic theory

The winner of the prestigious Abel Prize of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters for the year 2012 is 72-year-old Hungarian mathematician Endre Szemerédi of the Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, and Department of Computer Science, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in the United States.
The announcement was made by the President of the Norwegian Academy in Oslo on Tuesday March 20,2012 and the award is being given “for his fundamental contributions to discrete mathematics and theoretical computer science, and in recognition of the profound and lasting impact of these contributions on additive number theory and ergodic theory.”
Discrete mathematics is the study of structures such as graphs, sequences, permutations and geometric configurations and it is the mathematics of such structures that forms the foundation of theoretical computer science and information theory.