Wang Hong and Deng Yu Win 2026 Fields Medals in Historic First for Chinese Citizens

Two Chinese mathematicians join the world's highest ranks

Wang Hong, 35, and Deng Yu, 37, have become the first Chinese citizens to win the Fields Medal, receiving mathematics' highest honor at the opening ceremony of the International Congress of Mathematicians in Philadelphia on July 23, 2026. Both began their undergraduate studies in Peking University's 2007 cohort before building research careers through institutions in the United States and Europe.

The International Mathematical Union selected four recipients this year. Joining Wang and Deng are John Pardon, 37, an American mathematician at Stony Brook University, and Jacob Tsimerman, 38, a Canadian mathematician at the University of Toronto. Their discoveries span the mathematics of waves, gases, geometric spaces and numbers.

The Fields Medal is awarded every four years to between two and four mathematicians younger than 40. It rewards major discoveries while also recognizing the promise of further achievement. Each recipient receives a gold medal bearing the image of Archimedes and 15,000 Canadian dollars.

Wang and Deng are the first Chinese passport holders to receive the medal. They are also the first two mathematicians who completed their undergraduate education in mainland China to receive it at the same ceremony. China becomes the fifth country, after the United States, France, Britain and Russia, to produce two Fields Medalists at one International Congress of Mathematicians.

Wang's award carries another historic distinction: she is only the third woman to receive the medal in its 90 year history. Deng's recognition celebrates work connecting the motion of individual particles with the equations used to describe gases. Together, their awards bring attention to two different routes into mathematics and to research built through international collaboration.

Wang's route began outside the competition system

Wang grew up in Guilin in southern China and entered Peking University to study earth and space sciences. She later transferred to mathematics, following an interest in mathematical analysis rather than the national mathematics competition system that has shaped the early careers of many celebrated Chinese mathematicians.

Her progress included a period of uncertainty about her academic direction before she decided to return to mathematics. That experience has become part of the attention surrounding her award: a researcher who changed subjects and experienced doubt has reached the highest level of the discipline.

Wang later studied in France and earned her doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2019. She is now a professor at New York University and also works at the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques in France. Her career links undergraduate education in China with advanced study and research in the United States and Europe.

Deng followed a different path from the same cohort

Deng grew up in Shenzhen and entered mathematics through a more traditional competition route. He won gold medals in major Chinese and international mathematics competitions before transferring from Peking University to MIT.

He completed his doctorate at Princeton University in 2015 and is now a professor at the University of Chicago. Although he and Wang belonged to Peking University's 2007 undergraduate cohort, their early experiences show that achievement in research can develop from different beginnings.

Peking University's connection to both winners has become a central part of the celebration in China. Their shared university background connects a leading mainland institution with research careers developed through study and collaboration abroad.

Their education and research milestones stretch across nearly two decades:

• 2007: Wang and Deng belonged to the same undergraduate cohort at Peking University.
• 2015: Deng completed his doctorate at Princeton University.
• 2019: Wang earned her doctorate at MIT.
• July 23, 2026: Their Fields Medals were announced at the congress opening ceremony in Philadelphia.

A needle problem leads to Wang's breakthrough

Wang was recognized for major work in harmonic analysis and geometric measure theory. These fields examine how waves, signals and complicated shapes can be represented and understood through mathematical structures.

Her best known achievement is the solution, with Joshua Zahl, of the three dimensional Kakeya conjecture. Japanese mathematician Soichi Kakeya posed the original question in 1917: how little space is needed to rotate a needle through every possible direction?

A pencil moving across a tabletop offers a way to picture the question in two dimensions. In three dimensions, the needle must point in every direction in space while staying inside a set that may have a highly irregular shape. The challenge is to understand how small such a set can be.

Wang and Zahl proved that a three dimensional Kakeya set must have the full dimension of the surrounding space. Their result resolved a central problem that had resisted generations of researchers. The simple image of a rotating needle had led to a question requiring decades of mathematical work.

Mathematicians study Kakeya sets because they are connected to waves, light, signal transmission and Fourier analysis. Fourier analysis provides mathematical ways to represent and study waves and signals. These connections make the needle problem part of a much wider effort to understand how signals behave.

The proof also produced methods that may help with related questions in harmonic analysis. Those include wave equations, distance sets and the ways signals concentrate or spread. Although the research is highly abstract, the mathematical tools behind it connect with areas used in imaging, communications and the study of physical waves.

Wang described the achievement after the announcement as part of a wider effort involving many colleagues. She said major results grow through years of collaboration, chance encounters and questions that take researchers in unexpected directions. Her account places the breakthrough within a continuing exchange of ideas, rather than a single moment of discovery.

How Deng connected individual particles with a gas

Deng was honored for research in partial differential equations, probability and mathematical physics. His work addresses a basic question: how does the behavior of countless individual particles produce the smooth behavior of a gas when viewed on a much larger scale?

Individual particles move and collide according to precise mechanical rules. Scientists describing an entire gas instead use temperature, pressure and statistical averages. The Boltzmann equation, developed in the 19th century, is a central tool for describing how gases change over time.

Researchers had struggled for more than a century to prove rigorously how that equation emerges from the motion of individual particles. Deng and his collaborators established a mathematical link between a system of colliding hard spheres and the Boltzmann equation for dilute gases.

The work connects two ways of describing the same physical system. One follows particles and their collisions. The other uses an equation to describe the collective behavior of a gas. Deng's research places the transition between those descriptions on firm mathematical foundations.

The connection also helps explain how tiny, reversible collisions can produce behavior associated with irreversible processes. At the level of individual particles, mechanical rules are reversible. Yet a mixture of hot and cold gas will not spontaneously separate again. The research addresses how those different kinds of behavior fit together.

Deng's achievement concerns a focused part of David Hilbert's Sixth Problem, presented in 1900. Hilbert called for physical theories to be expressed with rigorous mathematical foundations. The new work gives researchers a stronger framework for studying statistical mechanics and complex physical systems.

Deng said receiving the medal made him happy both for himself and for the field he represents. His research connects abstract equations with questions about gases, fluids and the physical world, showing why a mathematical proof can matter to the foundations of physics.

Pardon and Tsimerman extend the range of discoveries

John Pardon was honored for work in symplectic and contact geometry, as well as topology. These fields study properties of spaces and shapes, including structures connected to the mathematics of physical systems and string theory.

Pardon developed tools for distinguishing complicated geometric spaces and used them to solve problems that had remained open for decades. His recognition brings geometry and topology into a group of awards that also includes Wang's analysis and Deng's mathematical physics.

Jacob Tsimerman works in number theory and complex algebraic geometry. He has used ideas from mathematical logic, especially o minimality, to address major questions involving Diophantine equations, Shimura varieties and the André Oort conjecture. His work brings together areas concerned with numbers, equations, geometric structures and logic.

The four recipients represent a wide range of modern mathematics. Their research includes waves, gases, geometric spaces, prime numbers and mathematical structures with many dimensions. The selection recognizes discoveries across the discipline rather than concentrating on one preferred area.

Princeton University also connects three of the four laureates. Deng earned his doctorate there, Pardon studied there as an undergraduate, and Tsimerman received his doctorate from the university. Those shared institutional links sit alongside the different subjects for which the mathematicians were honored.

Wang becomes the third woman to receive the medal

Wang follows Maryam Mirzakhani, who became the first woman to win the Fields Medal in 2014, and Maryna Viazovska, who received it in 2022. Only three women have won the prize during its 90 year history, reflecting the long standing gender imbalance in advanced mathematics.

Her award has drawn particular attention in China, where public discussion has focused on what it means for girls considering careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Wang's academic route gives that discussion a concrete example of success following a change of subject and periods of uncertainty.

Shing Tung Yau, the first Chinese born Fields Medalist, said her achievement could encourage more young women to study mathematics. He recalled that some Chinese families have viewed mathematics as a less suitable subject for girls and said Wang's success gives students a powerful example of what is possible.

Wang's career also illustrates the role of curiosity and sustained work alongside early academic distinction. She was not a major mathematics competition star as a teenager. Her eventual breakthrough followed university study, a return to the subject and years of research with colleagues.

China's ambitions are tied to international research

China has invested heavily in universities, laboratories and programs intended to attract researchers and strengthen domestic research capacity. The awards arrive as Beijing seeks a greater role in basic science, the study of principles that may have no immediate commercial use but can shape entire fields over time.

Chinese students have performed strongly in mathematics competitions for years. Original research requires a different kind of work: sustained attention to problems that may have no clear solution and freedom to pursue unfamiliar ideas. A Fields Medal usually recognizes the discoveries that emerge from years of that effort.

Wang and Deng's achievements suggest that links between education in China and leading research institutions abroad are producing results at the highest level. Both began their undergraduate studies in mainland China, continued through graduate programs in the United States and developed careers within networks spanning several countries.

Chinese social media platforms filled with congratulations after the announcement. State media presented the awards as a response to the old view that China was strong in applied mathematics and competitions but had yet to make comparable breakthroughs in fundamental theory.

Yau has urged Wang and Deng to return to China to teach. He also expressed the hope that future Fields Medalists will be trained entirely within Chinese institutions. Those goals reflect a wider effort to reduce the loss of talented researchers to overseas universities while keeping international cooperation open.

Yau, speaking in an interview with Chinese media, explained why he wanted the two laureates to return:

We very much hope they will come back, because that is important for China

Wang's work in the United States and France, together with Deng's position in Chicago, shows how international mathematics remains. Research teams, ideas and academic careers cross national borders even as governments compete for scientific prestige.

The awards arrive as AI enters mathematical research

Artificial intelligence is beginning to affect mathematical research, with new systems able to produce sophisticated looking proofs and suggest approaches to difficult problems. Mathematicians warn that these arguments can contain errors that are hard to detect.

A mathematical proof must be checked line by line and accepted by a community of specialists. The work recognized in Philadelphia required deep theory, collaboration and careful verification over long periods. The growth of AI has brought fresh attention to that process of establishing whether a discovery is reliable.

Tsimerman is expected to join OpenAI's safety division. He has said advances in AI may alter the mathematics profession, including how researchers search for ideas and test proofs. His expected move connects one of this year's medalists with the debate over changing research tools.

The Philadelphia ceremony celebrated achievements produced through human collaboration while those tools are changing quickly. Wang and Deng's awards also brought together several strands of the story: breakthroughs in fundamental mathematics, education across borders and a historic moment for Chinese citizens and women in the discipline.

What to Know

• Wang Hong and Deng Yu received the 2026 Fields Medal at the July 23 congress opening ceremony in Philadelphia.
• They are the first Chinese citizens and passport holders to win the award.
• Both belonged to Peking University's 2007 undergraduate cohort.
• Wang and Joshua Zahl solved the three dimensional Kakeya conjecture.
• Deng and his collaborators rigorously connected colliding hard spheres with the Boltzmann equation for dilute gases.
• Wang is the third woman to receive the medal, following Maryam Mirzakhani and Maryna Viazovska.
• John Pardon and Jacob Tsimerman are the other two recipients in 2026.
• The medal is awarded every four years to between two and four mathematicians younger than 40, with each receiving 15,000 Canadian dollars.