Chinese mathematicians awarded the Fields Medal for the first time

Two Chinese nationals were among the four people awarded the 2026 Fields Medal, mathematics' highest honor, in the US on Thursday.

The awards, bestowed during the opening ceremony of the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in Philadelphia, marked the first time Chinese nationals have won the prize since its creation in 1936.

Wang Hong, a professor at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques (IHES) in France, solved the three-dimensional Kakeya conjecture, a problem in harmonic analysis and geometric measure theory that had puzzled mathematicians for over a century.

Wang, a Peking University alumna who earned her PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), is also the third female Fields medalist in history, after Maryam Mirzakhani in 2014 and Maryna Viazovska in 2022.

Deng Yu, a professor at the University of Chicago, completed a rigorous derivation of the Boltzmann equation from Newtonian hard-sphere dynamics alongside collaborators Zaher Hani and Xiao Ma. The work marks a major milestone toward Hilbert's sixth problem, one of 23 foundational questions posed by David Hilbert in 1900. Deng studied at Peking University before transferring to MIT and earning his PhD at Princeton University.

John Pardon, a mathematician working in geometry and topology, proved the three-dimensional Hilbert-Smith conjecture and the MNOP conjecture in algebraic geometry. His work has been recognized for its wide-ranging impact across multiple subfields.

Jacob Tsimerman, a professor at the University of Toronto, proved the Andre-Oort conjecture in arithmetic geometry, a problem that had remained open for nearly 40 years.

All four recipients are under 40, as required by the award's statutes. The Fields Medal is awarded every four years at the ICM and comes with a gold medal and a prize of 15,000 Canadian dollars (about $10,650). A press conference with the medalists is scheduled for later Thursday.