Mathematicians Hillel Furstenberg and Gregory Margulis share this year’s Abel Prize, the mathematics equivalent of a Nobel. Furstenberg, 84, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Margulis, 74, of Yale University, are retired professors.

The citation for the prize, awarded by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, lauds the two mathematicians “for pioneering the use of methods from probability and dynamics in group theory, number theory and combinatorics.” The two will split the award money of 7.5 million Norwegian kroner, or more than $700,000.

This year’s Abel winners were trailblazers. François Labourie, a mathematician at the University of Côte d’Azur in France who served on the Abel committee, said that most mathematicians in the middle of the 20th century did not think much of probability, which was at the bottom in the hierarchy of mathematics, below number theory, algebra and differential geometry. “But Dr. Furstenberg and Dr. Margulis found ways to show how its methods could solve abstract problems,” Dr. Labourie said. “They were some of the first persons to show that probabilistic methods are central to mathematics.”