Sweden's 2012 Crafoord prizes in mathematics and astronomy, each category worth 4 million Swedish krona (580,000 U.S. dollars), were announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Thursday.

The prize in mathematics was awarded to Belgian Jean Bourgain and Terence Tao from Australia "for their brilliant and groundbreaking work in harmonic analysis, partial differential equations, ergodic theory, number theory, combinatorics, functional analysis and theoretical computer science," said a statement from the academy.

Bourgain was born in Belgium in 1954, and is now a professor at Institute for Advanced Study, U.S., while Tao, born in 1975, is both Australian and American citizen, professor at University of California in the U.S.

Meanwhile, this year's prize in astronomy went to German Reinhard Genzel and American Andrea Ghez "for their observations of the stars orbiting the galactic centre, indicating the presence of a supermassive black hole," said the statement.

Genzel was born in 1952 in Germany and is now professor at University of California, Berkeley in the U.S. and also Scientific Director of Max-Planck-Institut fur extraterrestrische in Germany.

The other prize-winner Ghez was born in 1965 in New York City and is now professor at University of California, U.S..

VietNamNet/Xinhuanet