The Abel Committee consists of five outstanding research scientists in the field of mathematics. The members of the Abel Committee are appointed for a period of two years and may be reappointed once, based on nominations from the International Mathematical Union and the European Mathematical Society. The Abel Committee shall review the nominated candidates for the Abel Prize and submit a recommendation to the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. Terence Tao, a Genius mathematician and Fields Medal winner from UC Berkeley, and David Donoho, a famous mathematical statistician from Stanford University are among the the Abel Prize Committee 2011/2012

The Abel Prize, named after Norwegian mathematician Niels henrik Abel, is an international prize presented annually by the King of Norway to one or more outstanding mathematicians and has often been described as the “Mathematician’s Nobel Prize”.

The prize was first proposed to be part of the 1902 celebration of 100th anniversary of Abel's birth. In 1899, shortly before his death, Sophus Lie proposed establishing an Abel Prize when he learned that Alfred Nobel's plans for annual prizes, made known in 1897, would not include a prize in mathematics. King Oscar II was willing to finance a mathematics prize in Abel's name, and the mathematicians Ludwig Sylow and Carl St？rmer drew up statutes and rules for the proposed prize. However, Lie's influence waned after his death, and the dissolution of the Union between Sweden and Norway in 1905 ended the first attempt to create the Abel Prize.

In 2001, after interest in the prize had risen, a working group was formed to develop a proposal, which was presented to the prime minister of Norway in May. In August 2001, the Norwegian government announced that the prize would be awarded beginning in 2002, the two-hundredth anniversary of Abel's birth. The amount of money that comes with the prize is close to 1 million US dollars, similar to the Nobel Prizes 12 prestigious mathematicians has been awarded the Abel Prize since 2003.