Jesse Douglas solves in 1930-1931, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Plateau problem: proving the existence of a minimal surface (of minimal area) with a given arbitrary boundary in space. The problem, posed by the Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau in the 19th century based on his experiments with soap films, had resisted more than seventy years of attempts at a general proof. Independently and almost simultaneously, the Hungarian mathematician Tibor Radó published in 1930 a solution using a different method, generating a priority dispute never fully resolved within the mathematical community over which of the two had reached the general result first. Douglas received in 1936, together with Lars Ahlfors, the first Fields Medal ever awarded; Radó, despite being an independent co-discoverer of the same result, was never awarded this distinction.