Field Medal: The Chinese won the world’s highest mathematics prize for the first time

Two Chinese scholars have won the world’s top prize in mathematics for the first time, state media reported.

Chinese mathematicians Hong Wang and Yu Deng won against American John Pardon and Canadian Jacon Tsimmerman. They each won 15,000 Canadian dollars (10,500; £8,000).

Both won by solving problems that had puzzled mathematicians for more than a century. And Wang, 35, who teaches in the US and France, is only the third woman to receive the honor.

The Field Medal, the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in mathematics, was awarded in the US on Thursday as human calculations are increasingly challenged by AI.

The success made waves on Chinese social media.

The hashtags “Field Medal” and “First Chinese Mathematicians to Win Field Medals” generated millions of views on various social media platforms, from Weibo to RedNote.

The Chinese media also reported the two scholars widely. Starting from their studies and personal interests, they have provided detailed articles on what their results mean for the country.

“For the Chinese mathematical community, this is a dream we have been waiting to realize for decades,” said Shing-tung Yau, the first ethnic Chinese field medalist.

Along with her colleague Josh Zahl, Wang answered a question posed by the Japanese mathematician Sochi Kakeya in 1917: If you could rotate a pencil to make a full turn, what would be the smallest area it would erase?

Wang and Zahl analyzed the problem by assuming that the lead floats not on a flat surface but in three-dimensional space. They published their study last year.

“If this conjecture is so appealing to people, it’s because this kind of phenomenon naturally appears in problems from different fields,” Wang told Agence France-Presse.

Deng, 37, a mathematics professor at the University of Chicago, was honored for his work on solving another century-old problem.

In the year In 1900, the German mathematician David Hilbert asked what is known as Hilbert’s Sixth Problem, how to calculate the general behavior based on the motion of individual particles.

Deng solved the problem by observing the behavior of gases.

“It is truly an honor to have my name listed after those great mathematicians who I have always admired,” he said.

Wang worked in harmonic analysis, which looks at the movement of waves.

The Field Medal is awarded every four years to outstanding mathematicians under the age of 40.

Additional report by Fan Wang