Beijing, July 25: Two Chinese mathematicians have become the first from China to win the prestigious Fields Medal, widely regarded as the Nobel Prize of mathematics, after solving mathematical problems that had challenged researchers for more than a century, the BBC reported.
According to Chinese state media, Hong Wang and Yu Deng shared the honour with American mathematician John Pardon and Canadian mathematician Jack Thorne Zimmermann. Each received a prize of C$15,000, about Rs 1.16 million.
The medals were presented at a ceremony in the United States on Thursday. The award has drawn added attention as advances in artificial intelligence continue to reshape scientific research and computation.
Thirty-five-year-old Hong Wang also became only the third woman in history to receive the Fields Medal.
The achievement sparked celebrations across China. Hashtags related to the Fields Medal trended on Chinese social media platforms Weibo and RedNote, while leading media outlets highlighted the winners’ academic journeys and contributions.
Veteran mathematician Shing Tung Yau, the first Chinese born Fields Medal winner, called the achievement a long-awaited milestone for China’s mathematics community.
Wang earned the honour for solving a famous problem first posed by Japanese mathematician Soichi Kakeya in 1917 with collaborator Josh Zahl. The problem asks how little area is needed to rotate a pencil through a full turn. Their research, published last year, approached the question in three-dimensional space rather than on a flat surface.
Speaking to AFP, Wang said the Kakeya conjecture fascinates researchers because similar mathematical patterns appear across many branches of science.
The second Chinese recipient, 37-year-old Yu Deng, was recognised for solving a problem linked to German mathematician David Hilbert’s famous sixth problem, proposed in 1900. Deng’s work explains how the behaviour of gases can be understood from the motion of microscopic particles, bridging particle physics and large-scale systems.
Deng, now a professor at the University of Chicago, said joining the ranks of mathematicians he had long admired was a tremendous honour.
The Fields Medal is awarded every four years to mathematicians under the age of 40 for outstanding contributions to the field. Both Wang and Deng were born in China, studied at Peking University before pursuing advanced education in the United States, and have built internationally recognised academic careers. (Source BBC)
People’s News Monitoring Service
Login to add a comment