The Nevanlinna Prize has been awarded since 1983 for outstanding work in the fields of theoretical computer science. It is donated by the University of Helsinki in memory of the Finnish mathematician Rolf Nevanlinna, who was president of the International Mathematical Union 1959 - 1962 and organiser of the World Congress in Stockholm in 1962. One side of the medal shows the bust of Nevanlinna, and the other bears the seal of Helsinki University and a rectangle of noughts and ones. In 1989, Borcherds was able to cast some more light on the mathematical background of this topic and to produce a proof for the conjecture. Monster groups, in contrast, only seemed to be of importance in pure mathematicians.
Groups are mathematical objects which can be used to describe the symmetry of structures.
An important theorem of algebra says that all groups, however large and complicated they may seem, all consist of the same components - in the same way as the material world is made up of atomic particles. In his proof, Borcherds uses many ideas of string theory - a surprisingly fruitful way a making theoretical physics useful for mathematical theory. Although still the subject of dispute among physicists, strings offer a way of explaining many of the puzzles surrounding the origins of the universe. They were proposed in the search for a single consistent theory which brings together various partial theories of cosmology. Strings have a length but no other dimension and may be open strings or closed loops.