Frank Nelson Cole Prize in Number Theory

This Prize recognizes a notable research work in number theory that has appeared in the last six years. The work must be published in a recognized, peer-reviewed venue.

About this Prize

This prize (and the Frank Nelson Cole Prize in Algebra) was founded in honor of Professor Frank Nelson Cole upon of his retirement from the American Mathematical Society; he served as AMS Secretary for twenty-five years and as Editor-in-Chief of the Bulletin for twenty-one years. The original fund was donated by Professor Cole from moneys presented to him on his retirement, and was augmented by contributions from members of the Society. The fund was later doubled by his son, Charles A. Cole, and supported by family members. It has been further supplemented by George Lusztig and by an anonymous donor.

The current prize amount is US$5,000 and the prize is awarded every three years.

Most Recent Prize: 2023

The 2023 AMS Cole Prize in Number Theory is awarded to Kaisa Matomäki, James Newton, Maksym Radziwill, and Jack Thorne. K. Matomäki and M. Radziwiłł for their breakthrough paper 1. "Multiplicative functions in short intervals" [Annals of Math. 183 (2016), 1015-1056], which together with further developments by themselves and their collaborators have led to the solution and advances on long standing difficult problems, such as the Chowla Conjecture concerning local patterns in the parity of the number of prime factors of an integer. J. Newton and J. Thorne for their astonishing proof of a landmark sought after case of the Langlands Conjectures; namely the symmetric power functoriality for holomorphic modular forms. This is achieved in their two papers 1. Symmetric power functoriality for holomorphic modular forms, I. Publ. Math. Inst. Hautes Études Sci. 134 (2021), pp. 1-116. 2. Symmetric power functoriality for holomorphic modular forms, II. Publ. Math. Inst. Hautes Études Sci. 134 (2021), pp. 117-152.

Prize announcement as seen in the news release.

See previous winners

Next Prize: January 2026

Nomination Period: 1 February - 31 May

Nomination Procedure:

Submit a letter of nomination, a complete bibliographic citation for the work being nominated, and a brief citation that explains why the work is important.

Nominate a colleague