Chinese mathematicians Deng Yu and Wang Hong were awarded the Fields Medals at the 2026 International Congress of Mathematicians opened here on Thursday, marking the first time Chinese mathematicians have won the prestigious honor.
At the opening ceremony of the congress, held at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, the International Mathematical Union announced that Deng won the medal for his work in partial differential equations (PDEs), while Wang won the medal for her work in harmonic analysis and geometric measure theory.
“It’s a great honor to have my name listed after all those great mathematicians I’ve been always admiring,” Deng said at a press conference after the ceremony. “It’s a really important recognition of myself, of my work, my work with collaborators, and the field of PDEs and also the probability that I’m representing.”
“Roughly speaking, what I have been doing with collaborators is basically to connect the microscopic description of things, of the universe to the macroscopic description,” he added.
“It means a lot to me and also to my other collaborators,” Wang said. She recalled learning the news that Terence Tao got the Fields Medal when she was a high school student. “I was quite excited (then). So I’m also excited today.”
Wang works in harmonic analysis and geometric measure theory. “A problem that lies in the two fields is the Kakeya conjecture … I do feel like I’m combining the previous two fields’ methods,” she said.
“I am truly delighted for Dr. Deng and Dr. Wang, and I warmly congratulate both of them,” Fields Medal laureate Efim Zelmanov told Xinhua.
“The essential part of both laureates’ education was completed in China. Their remarkable achievement is a powerful recognition of China’s fundamental and rapidly growing role in the world of mathematics,” Zelmanov added.
Deng first studied at Peking University before transferring to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and received his Ph.D. from Princeton University. Wang got her bachelor’s at Peking University, a master’s degree from Paris-Saclay University and a Ph.D. from the MIT.
Deng is a professor at the University of Chicago. Wang is a professor at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques in France and the Courant Institute at New York University.
There are altogether four Fields Medal laureates this year. The other two are John Pardon, a U.S. mathematician at Stony Brook University; and Jacob Tsimerman, a Canadian mathematician at the University of Toronto.
The Fields Medal is a top international mathematics prize awarded every four years to two to four young researchers under the age of 40 in recognition of their outstanding mathematical achievements in existing work and their promise of future achievement.