Stephen J. Smale, a professor emeritus of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, who has contributed to a broad range of mathematical fields, has been named a recipient of the 2007 Wolf Foundation Prize in Mathematics, one of an array of prestigious prizes awarded yearly by the Israeli foundation.
Smale's work has been called "audacious" and has had a fundamental influence on numerous fields of mathematics, garnering him in 1966 the Fields Medal of the International Mathematical Union, often called the Nobel Prize of mathematics. The Wolf Prize honors Smale for "his groundbreaking contributions that have played a fundamental role in shaping differential topology, dynamical systems, mathematical economics and other subjects in mathematics."
Smale is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a 1996 winner of the National Medal of Science, and the subject of a 2000 biography, "Stephen Smale: The Mathematician Who Broke the Dimension Barrier," by Steve Batterson (UC Newsroom, University of California, 2007 - 01 - 19).