Two Chinese mathematicians become first from country to win Fields Medal, solving century-old puzzles

History made at Fields Medal ceremony

Four young mathematicians received the Fields Medal on Thursday, July 23, in the United States. The quadrennial prize, widely regarded as the Nobel equivalent in mathematics, was awarded to Hong Wang (China/US), Yu Deng (China), John Pardon (US) and Jacob Tsimerman (Canada). Each winner receives 15,000 Canadian dollars (approximately $10,500 US, £8,000) and a gold coin bearing the profile of Archimedes.

Both Wang, a professor at New York University and France's Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques, and Deng, a professor at the University of Chicago, were educated at Peking University in Beijing. Their wins mark the first time mainland China has produced two Fields medallists in a single year.

Hong Wang cracks a century-old geometry puzzle

Wang is only the third woman in the 90-year history of the prize to receive the medal. She was honoured for solving the three-dimensional Kakeya conjecture, a problem first posed by Japanese mathematician Soichi Kakeya in 1917. The original puzzle asked for the smallest area a needle could sweep out when rotated in every direction inside a plane; Wang, working with collaborator Josh Zahl, answered the modern extension into three dimensions. Their results were published last year.

This hypothesis captivates people so much because such phenomena naturally appear in problems from many different fields.

It's just a problem about how straight lines can intersect one another. But there's such an incredible richness encoded in it - an incredible array of connections to other problems.

Her work also earned recognition for major advances in harmonic analysis and geometric measure theory.

Yu Deng's contribution

Deng, who joined the University of Chicago faculty, was awarded the medal for solving another puzzle that had challenged mathematicians for more than a century. The precise nature of the problem traces back to a question raised by German mathematician David Hilbert in 1900, though details remained scarce in early reports. Like Wang's result, his breakthrough addressed a long-standing gap in the foundations of the discipline.

A milestone for Chinese mathematics

Before this week, only two mathematicians of Chinese heritage, Shing-Tung Yau (1982) and Terence Tao (2006), had won the Fields Medal. Neither was a Chinese citizen at the time. The double success makes China the fifth country, after the US, France, the UK and Russia, to produce two medallists at a single ceremony, and the first in Asia to do so.

For the Chinese mathematics community, this is a dream we've hoped to realize for decades.

Both Wang and Deng completed their undergraduate studies at Peking University, a point heavily emphasised in Chinese state media coverage that detailed their educational paths, personal interests, and what the achievement means for the country.

Celebration erupts online

The news dominated Chinese social media within hours. Hashtags translating to "Fields Medal" and "First Chinese mathematicians to receive Fields Medal" trended on platforms from Weibo to Rednote.

This is a pride for the entire Chinese people.

We are witnessing history.

The official ceremony took place in the United States, with no host city specified in the announcements.