Mathematicians win top prize after solving century's-old problems

Mathematicians Hong Wang and Yu Deng have made history by becoming the first Chinese academics to win the prestigious Fields Medal. They share the award with US mathematician John Pardon and Canadian Jacon Tsimerman, each receiving 15,000 Canadian dollars. The prize recognizes their groundbreaking work in solving long-standing mathematical problems that have baffled experts for over a century.

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For the Chinese mathematics community, this is a dream we have been hoping to realise for decades.

Wang, 35, who also teaches in the US and France, is only the third woman to receive this esteemed honor. The Fields Medal, widely considered the highest accolade in mathematics, was presented in the US amid a growing discussion about artificial intelligence's impact on human computation. The news has ignited a fervor on Chinese social media, with related hashtags trending and generating millions of views across platforms like Weibo and Rednote. Chinese media outlets have provided extensive coverage, detailing the academics' backgrounds and the significance of their achievement for the nation.

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If this conjecture fascinates people so much, it is because this kind of phenomenon shows up naturally in problems from very different fields.

One of the problems solved by Wang, in collaboration with Josh Zahl, was the Kakeya conjecture, posed in 1917. They analyzed the problem in a three-dimensional space, considering the smallest area a pencil sweeps when rotated completely. Deng, a 37-year-old professor at the University of Chicago, was recognized for his work on Hilbert's Sixth Problem, a question posed in 1900 by German mathematician David Hilbert concerning the behavior of gases based on the movement of individual particles. Deng expressed his honor at being listed among mathematicians he deeply admires. Wang's expertise lies in harmonic analysis, the study of wave movements. The Fields Medal is awarded every four years to mathematicians under the age of 40.

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It is a really great honor to have my name listed after all those great mathematicians I've always been admiring.