"Nobel Prize of mathematics” awards solutions to 100-year-old mysteries China celebrates historic first victories

The highest honour in mathematics and often described as the “Nobel Prize of mathematics was awarded this week, with two Chinese scholars becoming the country's first laureates thanks to their breakthroughs on problems that had challenged researchers for more than a century.

Hong Wang and Yu Deng received the Fields Medal alongside two North American mathematicians during the opening ceremony of the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in Philadelphia on July 23, as US media reports.

Awarded every four years by the International Mathematical Union (IMU), the Fields Medal recognises exceptional achievements in mathematics by researchers under the age of 40.

The historic achievement generated widespread attention in China, with hashtags including “Fields Medal” and “First Chinese mathematicians to win Fields Medals” gaining millions of views across domestic social media platforms such as Weibo and Rednote.

The victory marked several milestones. Wang became only the third woman in history to receive the Fields Medal in its 90-year old history, while Deng is recognised as the first mathematician representing China to win the award as Wang, who was born in China, is officially recognised as an American mathematician.

Solving mathematical problems that lasted generations

The IMU selected Deng, who works at the University of Chicago; Wang, who is affiliated with New York University and France’s Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques (IHES); American mathematician John Pardon of Stony Brook University whose work solved major problems in topology and geometry; and Canadian mathematician Jacob Tsimerman of the University of Toronto who developed powerful new techniques in algebraic geometry that have advanced progress on longstanding mathematical puzzles.

Deng, a 37-year-old mathematics professor, was honoured for solving a problem connected to one of the famous challenges posed by German mathematician David Hilbert in 1900.

Known as Hilbert’s Sixth Problem, the question explored how the behaviour of a large system could be predicted based on the movement of its individual components. Deng addressed the challenge by studying the behaviour of gases and developing new approaches to understanding complex systems.

Wang, together with her colleague Josh Zahl, solved another long-standing mathematical question originally proposed by Japanese mathematician Soichi Kakeya in 1917.

The so-called Kakeya problem asks: if a pencil is rotated to make a complete turn, what is the smallest possible area it can sweep out?

Wang and Zahl examined the problem by considering the pencil as moving through three-dimensional space rather than across a flat surface. Their research, published last year, provided a breakthrough in understanding the problem that had remained unresolved for more than a century.

The latest Fields Medal awards highlight the continued advancement of modern mathematics and the growing global contributions of researchers from diverse backgrounds.

By Nazrin Sadigova