German Gerd Faltings is the winner of the Abel Prize, awarded by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, and is considered the Nobel of mathematics, for his study of Diophantine equations (in which the solutions must be whole numbers, without decimals or fractions). Faltings is director emeritus of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics and became a celebrity at the age of 29 when he proved a conjecture that won him the Fields Medal in 1986.