French mathematician Yves Meyer wins the 2017 Abel Prize
The French mathematician Yves Meyer won the prestigious Abel Prize of 2017 for his central role in the development of the mathematical theory of wavelets.Yves Meyer's theory is used for applications ranging from image compression to the detection of gravitational waves of black hole fusion.
It also allowed scientists to create unique wavelet transforms adapted to specific signals.
About the Abel Award
It is awarded annually by the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters to one or more outstanding mathematicians.
Yves Meyer is called the Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel. The price was established by the Government of Norway in 2001.
Yves Meyer is described as the Nobel Prize winner in mathematics and is one of the biggest prizes in the world in mathematics.
It carries a monetary price of 6 million Norwegian kroner (NOK) (about 600,000 euros).
The American Indian mathematician R. Srinivasa Varadhan received this prize in 2007 for his fundamental contributions to the theory of probabilities and to create a unified theory of the great deviation.
About Wavelets
Wavelets are widely used in signal processing, including compression of some JPEG image formats. They are like their Fourier transforms to the more famous cousins.
They are particularly useful when the objective is to reject certain foreign information (such as low-frequency noise from the universe) while retaining the important signal.