Introduction - ICM 1986

The International Congress of Mathematicians meets once every four years. The 1986 meeting took place in Berkeley, California. Three mathematicians received the Fields medal at this occasion:

• Simon Donaldson for his work on the topology of four-manifolds, especially for showing that there is a differential structure on euclidean four-space which is different from the usual structure.
• Gerd Faltings for his proof of the Mordell Conjecture.
• Michael Freedman for his proof of the four-dimensional topological Poincaré Conjecture.

Here are some pictures, taken at later occasions, and found on wikipedia.org.

Sir Simon Kirwan Donaldson

Gerd Faltings

Michael Hartley Freedman

This lecture series is about Donaldson's and Freedman's results and what happened since.