Japanese mathematician Masaki Kashiwara, who received the prestigious Abel Prize this year, has said his love for “beautiful” math sustained him through his more than half-century-long research career.
Becoming the first Japanese recipient of the award, considered the Nobel Prize for mathematics, the 78-year-old professor emeritus at Kyoto University’s Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences said in a recent interview he felt the beauty of math “the moment I proved something new.”
Masaki Kashiwara, project professor at Kyoto University’s Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences, speaks in an interview on May 19, 2025, in Oslo. (Kyodo) ==Kyodo
He also said he “deeply felt” the high value Norway attaches to math education through festivities related to the award, bestowed by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, while questioning his own country’s approach to math education.
In announcing the Abel Prize recipient in March, the academy said it recognized Kashiwara “for his fundamental contributions to algebraic analysis and representation theory,” among other achievements, calling him “a true mathematical visionary.”
His lifelong passion has not dimmed even though his speed of research has “slowed” due to his age, Kashiwara, who now serves as project professor at the Kyoto University institute, said.
With the development of the internet drastically changing methods of research, the professor recalled his past days when “it was difficult to find out even what was going on overseas” and said now he is tackling challenging problems by exchanging views online with three mathematicians in South Korea.
Kashiwara said he is worried that Japan’s system of university entrance examinations and a perception that math is “a memorization subject” could create further aversion to math and reduce students’ motivation to pursue careers in the field.
He said he sees potential in China, which is proactively attracting willing specialists and where the publishing of scientific papers is increasing.
Born in Ibaraki Prefecture, northeast of Tokyo, Kashiwara earned a master’s degree from the University of Tokyo before obtaining a doctorate from Kyoto University. He has been project professor at Kyoto University’s Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences since 2010.
Under the guidance of his mentor, Mikio Sato, a professor emeritus at Kyoto University, Kashiwara developed the theory of D-modules for his master’s thesis in 1970, a framework that has become a fundamental tool in many branches of mathematics.
Kashiwara and his colleagues proved the Riemann-Hilbert correspondence, a major problem in mathematics for many years, for holonomic D-modules, around 1980.
The Abel Prize award ceremony was held in Norway on Tuesday, with Kashiwara receiving prize money of 7.5 million Norwegian krone ($733,000). It was established in 2002 in connection with the 200th anniversary of the birth of Niels Henrik Abel, a pioneering Norwegian mathematician.
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