Eric M. Friedlander, President of the American Mathematical Society (AMS), congratulates Endre Szemerédi with the 2012 Abel Prize. "On behalf of the American Mathematical Society, I heartily congratulate Endre Szemerédi upon his award of the 2012 Abel Prize. Professor Szemerédi has made many deep and important contributions to discrete mathematics and theoretical computer science. His many remarkable results across a wide spectrum of discrete mathematics continue to have a forceful impact on current research in number theory, combinatorics, and ergodic theory."
In 2008, the American Mathematical Society awarded its 2008 Steele Prize for "seminal contribution to research" to Professor Szemerédi, recognizing the influence of " Szemerédi's Theorem" which establishes the existence of arbitrarily long progressions in any set of integers with positive density.