Akshay Venkatesh, a renowned Indian-Australian mathematician, is one of the four winners of mathematics' prestigious Fields Medal, known as the Nobel Prize for mathematics. The award is handed out in a ceremony at Rio De Genero, Brazil in the International Congress of Mathematicans( ICM 2018).

The Fields medals are awarded every four years to the most promising mathematicians under the age of 40.

New Delhi-born Venkatesh, 36, who is currently teaching at Stanford University, has won the Fields Medal for his “profound contributions to an exceptionally broad range of subjects in mathematics.”

CaucherBirkar, a Cambridge University professor of Iranian Kurdish origin, Peter Scholze, a German teaching at the University of Bonn, AlessioFigalli, an Italian mathematician at ETH Zurich are the other winners.

Each winner receives a 15,000 Canadian-dollar cash prize. At least two, and preferably four people, are always honoured in the award ceremony.

The prize was inaugurated in 1932 at the request of Canadian mathematician John Charles Fields, who ran the 1924 Mathematics Congress in Toronto.