In March 2007 an Indian won a big award in Mathematics. I had written about it at IIT Madras (for a mailing list). I reproduce the writeup here:
The 2007 Abel Prize has been awarded to S.R. Srinvasa Varadhan (Faculty NYU) (Ph. D. ISI Calcutta 1963) for his contributions to probability theory.
The Abel prize is worth approx USD 997,000 and is presented by the King of Norway. The winner is selected by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. Some people say that the Abel Prize is the Nobel equivalent for Mathematics (Though this can be disputed by those who would give that place to the Fields Medal which has a longer history. Interestingly the fields medal is only awarded to mathematicians under 40. This, I believe makes it
a “flawed” prize. Also, the fields medal would only make you richer by US $13,000).
The Abel prize is named after a Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel who made many impressive contributions before he died at the age of 26(!).
(When something is commutative i.e. a*b = b*a we also call it Abelian in his honour). What’s interesting to me is that Abel rhymes with Nobel 
Perhaps that bodes well for the prize in the public’s imagination.
S.R. Srinivas did his Ph. D. in ISI Calcutta (1963) and then went for his postdoc at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at NYU. Incidently he is from Chennai and did his B.Sc. from Presidency (1959).
I have found Tamil translations on the website of the prize. Go to
here for a tamil translation.
Lets go for the big prizes!! We Indians can do it (perhaps not in
cricket??) !
For those who are really interested
The authoritative source
http://www.abelprisen.no/en/
More Info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abel_Prize
Some news articles:
International Herald Tribune
The Hindu
Minor Quibble: The Hindu incorrectly lists the amount as US $850,000. Its
about US $975,000
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