Furstenberg and Margulis share the Abel Prize

The Norwegian Academy of Sciences decided to award the 2020 Abel Prize to Hillel Furstenberg, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, and Gregory Margulis, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA, "for their pioneering work in the application of methods of probability and dynamics in group theory ", number theory and combinatorics"

Hillel Furstenberg and Gregory Margulis invented random walk techniques for examining mathematical objects such as groups and graphs, thus introducing probabilistic methods to solve many open problems in group theory, number theory, combinatorics and graph theory. The work of Furstenberg and Margulis has proven the effectiveness of crossing borders between different mathematical disciplines and brought down the traditional wall between pure and applied mathematics ", says Hans Munthe-Kaas, Chairman of the Abel Committee, and continues:" Furstenberg and Margulis amazed the mathematical world with their ingenious application of probabilistic methods and random walks to solve profound problems in various areas of mathematics. This opened up a wealth of new results, such as the existence of long arithmetic courses of prime numbers, the understanding of the structure of lattices in Lie groups and the construction of expander graphs with applications in communication technology and computer science, to name just a few.