2026 Fields Medal Awarded to Yu Deng, John Pardon, Jacob Tsimerman, and Hong Wang

2026 Fields Medal Awarded to Yu Deng, John Pardon, Jacob Tsimerman, and Hong Wang

• Awarded by: International Mathematical Union [IMU] at opening ceremony of International Congress of Mathematicians [ICM] held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
• Known as: Nobel Prize of Mathematics.
• About Award: Established 1936 by Canadian mathematician John Charles Fields via trust-fund. Awarded once every 4 years by IMU during ICM to 2 or 4 mathematicians under age 40. Prize CND 15,000 [~USD 10,600] + gold medal featuring Archimedes.
• Winners 2026:
  • John Pardon: Prof at SUNY Stony Brook University Simons Centre, USA. For achievements in symplectic geometry including virtual fundamental cycles, Fukaya categories, counting holomorphic curves, geometry and topology including knot theory.
  • Yu Deng: Mathematician at University of Chicago. Contribution in partial differential equations including Boltzmann equation from hard-sphere dynamics for rarefied gases and wave kinetic equations from non-linear dispersive systems.
  • Jacob Tsimerman: Prof at University of Toronto, Canada. Proving Andre-Oort conjecture for Siegel modular varieties, Griffiths' conjecture on algebraicity of images of period maps and recasting of o-minimality.
  • Hong Wang: Prof at NYU and permanent professor at IHES France. Only 3rd female winner in 90-year history after Maryam Mirzakhani 2014 and Maryna Viazovska 2022. Solved century-old Kakeya conjecture. Yu Deng and Hong Wang became 1st Chinese nationals to receive award since 1982 after Shing-Tung Yau.
• UPSC Relevance: GS3 - S&T, Awards, Prelims.