Hong Waang and Yu Deng have become the first Chinese mathematicians to win the Fields Medal, the most prestigious prize in mathematics, equivalent in standing to a Nobel Prize. The award was presented on Thursday in the United States.
Historic Achievement at the 2025 Fields Medal Ceremony
Waang and Deng were honoured alongside John Pardon of the United States and Jacob Tsimerman of Canada. Each recipient received 15,000 Canadian dollars (about $10,500 or £8,000). At 35, Waang is only the third woman in the medal's history to receive the honour.
Problems That Stumped Mathematicians for Over a Century
According to BBC, Waang, who teaches at New York University and holds a permanent professorship at France's Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques, tackled a question first posed by Japanese mathematician Soichi Kakeya in 1917. The problem asks: if you rotate a pencil so that it turns completely around, what is the smallest area it sweeps out? Working with colleague Josh Zahl, Waang approached the problem by assuming the pencil moves through three-dimensional space rather than a flat surface. Their findings were published last year.
"If this conjecture fascinates people so much, it is because this kind of phenomenon shows up naturally in problems from very different fields," Waang told AFP News Agency.
Deng, a 37-year-old professor at the University of Chicago, was recognised for resolving a problem that dates back to 1900, when German mathematician David Hilbert asked how the collective behaviour of a system could be calculated from the movement of its individual particles — a challenge that became known as Hilbert's Sixth Problem. Deng solved it by examining how gases behave at a molecular level.
"It is a really great honour to have my name listed after all those great mathematicians I've always been admiring," he said.
Born in China, Trained Abroad
Both mathematicians share striking similarities in their academic paths. Waang was born in 1991 in Guilin, a city in China's Guangxi region. She skipped two primary school grades and entered Peking University at 16 in 2007, initially studying earth sciences before switching to mathematics. She later studied in France and earned her doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
On Thursday night, French President Emmanuel Macron called Waang to congratulate her. "She embodies the excellence of our research and our training," Macron wrote on X, adding: "Choose France for science."
Deng also entered Peking University in 2007, transferred to MIT in 2009, and completed his doctorate at Princeton University before joining the University of Chicago in 2024.
Chinese Social Media Erupts in Celebration
The achievement set off a wave of celebration in China. Hashtags including "Fields Medal" and "First Chinese mathematicians to win Fields Medals" attracted millions of views across platforms such as Weibo and Rednote. "Pride of all Chinese people," one Weibo user wrote, while another said: "We are witnessing history."
Shing-Tung Yau, the first ethnic Chinese Fields medallist, captured the significance of the moment: "For the Chinese mathematics community, this is a dream we have been hoping to realise for decades."
Impact on Global Mathematics
The Fields Medal, awarded every four years to mathematicians under 40, has now recognized Chinese-born mathematicians for the first time. Waang and Deng's solutions to problems that had remained unsolved for over a century have drawn millions of reactions on Chinese social media, underscoring the growing prominence of Chinese researchers in the global mathematical community.
