2026 Fields Medals Announced | Peking University Alumni Wang Hong and Deng Yu Both Win, First Chinese Double in Same Edition
TL;DR
The 2026 Fields Medals were announced; Peking University alumni Wang Hong and Deng Yu — both from the Class of 2007 — each won, marking the first time two Chinese mathematicians won in the same edition.
On July 23 local time, the 2026 International Congress of Mathematicians opened in Philadelphia. The International Mathematical Union officially announced the 21st Fields Medal recipients. Peking University Class-of-2007 alumni Wang Hong and Deng Yu both won — the first time two Chinese mathematicians won in the same edition.
Deng Yu's citation: contributions to partial differential equations — rigorously deriving the Boltzmann equation from hard-sphere dynamics of rarefied gases, deriving wave dynamics equations from nonlinear dispersive systems, and probabilistic methods research on nonlinear Schrödinger dynamics. Rigorous derivation of the Boltzmann equation is a century-old open problem in statistical physics.
Wang Hong's citation: contributions to harmonic analysis and geometric measure theory — multi-scale and decoupling techniques applied to the local smoothing conjecture for planar wave equations, and major advances on Fourier restriction, Falconer distance set, planar Furstenberg sets, and the three-dimensional Kakeya problem.
The other two laureates: John Pardon (symplectic geometry, virtual fundamental cycles) and Jacob Tsimerman (o-minimality applied to arithmetic geometry). The Fields Medal is awarded once every four years to at most four mathematicians under 40, and is called "the Nobel Prize of mathematics."
via IMU / China News
Deng Yu's citation: contributions to partial differential equations — rigorously deriving the Boltzmann equation from hard-sphere dynamics of rarefied gases, deriving wave dynamics equations from nonlinear dispersive systems, and probabilistic methods research on nonlinear Schrödinger dynamics. Rigorous derivation of the Boltzmann equation is a century-old open problem in statistical physics.
Wang Hong's citation: contributions to harmonic analysis and geometric measure theory — multi-scale and decoupling techniques applied to the local smoothing conjecture for planar wave equations, and major advances on Fourier restriction, Falconer distance set, planar Furstenberg sets, and the three-dimensional Kakeya problem.
The other two laureates: John Pardon (symplectic geometry, virtual fundamental cycles) and Jacob Tsimerman (o-minimality applied to arithmetic geometry). The Fields Medal is awarded once every four years to at most four mathematicians under 40, and is called "the Nobel Prize of mathematics."
via IMU / China News