The 'Nobel Prize of Mathematics': 2 Chinese Mathematicians Win Fields Medal

At the opening ceremony of the 2026 International Congress of Mathematicians, held on the 23rd at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, USA, Chinese mathematicians Deng Yu and Wang Hong received the Fields Medal. This marks the first time mathematicians of Chinese nationality have won this award.

According to Xinhua News Agency, the Fields Medal is awarded once every four years, with usually no more than four laureates each time. It recognizes scholars under the age of 40 at the time of the award who have made outstanding contributions in mathematics. It is one of the highest honors in the international mathematics community and is known as the "Nobel Prize of Mathematics."

Deng Yu received the Fields Medal for his outstanding work in the field of partial differential equations. Wang Hong was awarded for her exceptional achievements in harmonic analysis and geometric measure theory.

"To have my name listed alongside those great mathematicians I have always admired is a tremendous honor," Deng Yu said at the press conference after receiving the award. "This is not only a recognition of me personally, but also an affirmation of my work, the work accomplished together with my collaborators, and the entire field of probability theory."

Wang Hong told reporters, "This means a great deal to both me and my collaborators." She said she was very excited in high school when she read in a mathematics magazine that Terence Tao, a mathematician of Chinese descent, had received the Fields Medal. "Today I am equally excited." The three-dimensional Hanging Valley Conjecture is precisely a cross-disciplinary challenge in her research area, and what she did was to combine methods from two previously distinct fields.

A Milestone

Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Professor Zhang Jiping of the School of Mathematical Sciences, Peking University, believes, "This is the first time mathematicians of Chinese nationality have received the highest international award in mathematics, the Fields Medal. It is a historic breakthrough for Chinese mathematics and has milestone significance."

Both Chinese scientists once studied at the School of Mathematical Sciences, Peking University. Deng Yu is currently a professor of mathematics at the University of Chicago, USA. He and his collaborators solved a version of Hilbert's Sixth Problem, for the first time deriving a complete logical chain from microscopic particle systems to the macroscopic Boltzmann equation in a mathematically rigorous way. Wang Hong works at the Institute of Advanced Scientific Studies in France and at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University. In February 2025, she and her collaborators jointly solved the three-dimensional Hanging Valley Conjecture, which had puzzled mathematicians for over a century.

On the same day, American mathematician John Parden and Canadian mathematician Jacob Zimmerman received the Fields Medal together with the two Chinese scientists.

Previously, ethnic Chinese mathematicians Yau Shing-Tung and Terence Tao had also received the Fields Medal.