The world’s most prestigious mathematics prize was just awarded to a woman for the first time in history.

It has just been announced that the coveted Abel Prize is being awarded to 76-year-old Karen Keskulla Uhlenbeck “for her pioneering achievements in geometric partial differential equations, gauge theory and integrable systems, and for the fundamental impact of her work on analysis, geometry and mathematical physics.”

Often called the “Nobel” prize of mathematics, the prize comes with a $700,000 in prize money, and it will be presented to Uhlenbeck by the king of Norway in May.

The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters stated that they chose Uhlenbeck as the winner this year because of the decades of scientific contributions she has made, including her work with predictive mathematics inspired by soap bubbles.

“Her theories have revolutionized our understanding of minimal surfaces, such as those formed by soap bubbles, and more general minimization problems in higher dimensions,” explained Hans Munthe-Kaas, the chairman of the Abel Committee.

Uhlenbeck is currently a contributing scholar at Princeton University and is a gender equality advocate in the fields of science and mathematics. She is also a cofounder of the Institute’s Women and Mathematics program, which aims to recruit and empower women to lead in mathematics research at all stages of their academic careers.

“The recognition of Uhlenbeck’s achievements should have been far greater, for her work has led to some of the most important advances in mathematics in the last 40 years,” added Jim Al-Khalili, Royal Society Fellow.

Find out more in the video below.