To date, the International Mathematical Union (IMU) has awarded 44 Medals Fields. Three of them awarded works directly related to the Poincaré Conjecture. Some others were assigned to correlated topics. Check out five awards that are worth mentioning:
- Stephen Smale, 1966
- He received the Fields Medal in 1966 after proving the Poincaré Conjecture in dimensions greater than 4, in 1960
- William Thurston, 1982
- He received the Fields Medal in 1982, when formulating the Geometrization Conjecture and proving that it is valid in the case of Haken manifold ("Monster Theorem").
- Shing-Tung Yau , 1982
- He received the Fields Medal, also in 1982, for resolving the Calabi Conjecture and other works.
- Michael Freedman, 1986
- He received the Fields Medal in 1986, for proving the Poincaré Conjecture in dimension equal to 4, in 1982.
- Grigori Perelman, 2006
- He was granted the Fields Medal, in 2006, after publishing articles containing the proof of the Poincaré Conjecture and the Geometrization Conjetcure, in 2002. However, Perelman refused the award.
In addition, the Poincaré Conjecture is identified as one of the seven Millennium Problems, according to the Clay Mathematics Institute. To solve these problems, the institution offers the prize of a million dollars.