2026 Fields Medals awarded to Yu Deng, John Pardon, Jacob Tsimerman and Hong Wang

scienceJul 23, 2026271,471

The International Mathematical Union awarded the 2026 Fields Medals at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Philadelphia to Yu Deng, John Pardon, Jacob Tsimerman and Hong Wang. Hong Wang, a researcher at New York University and France's Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques, became the first Chinese woman and only the third woman overall to receive a Fields Medal after resolving the three-dimensional Kakeya conjecture with Joshua Zahl, work the IMU said opened doors across harmonic analysis, partial differential equations and geometric measure theory. Yu Deng of the University of Chicago was honored for research toward axiomatizing physics, including a key paper coauthored with Zaher Hani and Xiao Ma, which the IMU described as a leap forward in deriving physical laws from first principles. John Pardon was cited for contributions to topology and geometry, and Jacob Tsimerman was praised for extending logical frameworks into algebraic geometry. Fields Medals are awarded every four years to between two and four mathematicians under age 40, and this year marks the first time two Chinese scholars have simultaneously won the prize, bringing the total count of Chinese-born medalists to three. The medals were presented at the ICM opening ceremony, where IMU vice-president Ulrike Tillmann highlighted both the recipients' achievements and the significance of another woman winning the award.

👁️🍄🪸

@bloomfilters.plus

yu deng, the winner of the 2026 Fields Medal, the "nobel prize for mathematics", cites yuri manga in particular as helping ground and comfort him during his work

For comfort, Deng turned to manga. “I remember him at Courant. He was always holding a manga,” said Jalal Shatah (opens a new tab), a professor there who formerly chaired the math department. Deng particularly liked stories about deep friendship and romance and found himself drawn to a genre known as yuri, which focuses on those kinds of relationships between women — stories that “feel nice and warm and beautiful,” as he put it. They helped him be kinder to himself, “more comfortable with life.”

from Quanta Magazine

106345d ago

Fae 🏳️‍⚧️141

He is a real one frfr, people were looking up his wechat and other profiles and they go hard.

~56

whoa wait my mathematician friend is there at the big math conference, she says he has a marisa plushie on his desk

Avery in the old maelstrom 🔆💜53

HIME(DAN/JO)SHIS SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH.

James Endicott12

*considers a set of mapping relations between sets* This too is yuri.

Gock Socket3

I need to know which ones he read

ChapterBrief2

a Fields medalist crediting yuri manga for staying grounded is not the crossover I expected but it tracks. did he ever name which titles specifically?

Quoting this

bocchi minh188

yuri doesn't just make you human, it makes you very good at math apparently

Rafe Meager (they/them)11

Chat we’re so back bsky.app/profile/bloo...

the yuri sorcerer7

A third stereotype has been added to the Kinds of Guy a himedanshi can be.

Huuuruhgghg4

i think this guy might benefit from a chemical

Aphrodite4

Hurts to see someone living your dream...

Cas4

> Yuri manga ... helped him be kinder to himself Many such cases

kalina2hu.bsky.social3

Chinese touhou fans and knowing ReiAli is ball, name a more iconic duo

Jinxtor2

oh word he likes nikomaki based based based

Quanta Magazine

@quantamagazine.bsky.social

Hong Wang, who proved the three-dimensional Kakeya set conjecture, has just won the Fields Medal, making her the third woman in the award’s 90-year history to receive math’s highest honor. Read our profile: www.quantamagazine.org/hong-wang-wi...

5245d ago

David Brauer

@dbrauer.net

My daughter is a theoretical mathematics grad student, so I thought you’d appreciate this unpaywalled look into her field: wapo.st/3RzgtPo

4845d ago

Dr. Asmeret Asefaw Berhe

@aaberhe.com

Hong Wong today became the third woman to win a Fields Medal. She started out as an earth science major. Her geophysics prof affirmed importance of math to science for her, ex. for explaining how seismic waves are used to map Earth’s interior ... math related to the Kakeya problem.

2945d ago

Izabella Laba 🇨🇦

@ijlaba.bsky.social

Congratulations to Hong Wang on winning the Fields Medal! ilaba.wordpress.com/2026/07/23/c...

3645d ago

Simons Foundation

@simonsfoundation.org

During today's #ICM2026 opening ceremonies, the IMU announced the 2026 Fields Medals recipients: Yu Deng, John Pardon, Jacob Tsimerman, and Hong Wang Read more: https://bit.ly/4psOJbU

2745d ago

Quoting this

Princeton University5

Congrats to this year's Fields Medal recipients: 🏅Yu Deng *15 🏅John Pardon '11 🏅Jacob Tsimerman *11 🏅Hong Wang, a 2025 Minerva Lecturer for Princeton University's Department of Mathematics

Barbara Fantechi4

So the leak was correct! Amazing. Congratulations to the winners, and shame to the IMU that didn't show any coherence with their own actions in 2022.

Ele Willoughby

@minouette.bsky.social

The breathless CBC radio report this morning said a Canadian at a Canadian university had won the Fields Medal along with 3 others! Who are the others? Do they have names? Not reported there, but a nice summary here:

2645d ago

Lee Billings

@leebillings.bsky.social

Now on @sciam.bsky.social: The Fields Medals—math's most prestigious prizes, often compared to the Nobels—have 4 new honorees, for work ranging from the theory of knots to the motion of fluids. Congrats to Hong Wang, Yu Deng, John Pardon & Jacob Tsimerman! www.scientificamerican.com/article/2026...

2045d ago

Jordana Cepelewicz

@jordanacep.bsky.social

Yu Deng's path to math, and to the Fields Medal, took him through the worlds of competitive Go and classical Chinese poetry. I had the privilege of profiling him for @quantamagazine.bsky.social. www.quantamagazine.org/yu-deng-wins...

1545d ago

Ishmail Abdus-Saboor

@ishmailsaboor.bsky.social

Congratulations to Professor Wang on winning the Fields Medal (Nobel Prize for Math). Only the 3rd woman in history to win. And she won for a preprint article! We have some ways to go in biology before preprints receive this level of impact and recognition.

1945d ago

Le Monde

@lemonde.fr

Mathématiques : les médailles Fields 2026 consacrent l’émergence des Chinois

1245d ago

Eris

@isolyth.dev

whatever you say, you're the fields medal holder here I guess

2345d ago

Quoting this

Eris28

hey this isn't how this is supposed to go

norvid_studies3

fresh conjecture time let's noodle hard

New Scientist

@newscientist.com

Mathematicians who helped unify laws of physics and cracked decades-old problems in geometry are among this year's recipients of the Fields medal

1045d ago

University of Toronto

@utoronto.ca

‘Nobel Prize of mathematics’: #UofT mathematician Jacob Tsimerman awarded prestigious Fields Medal 🏅 uoft.me/jacob

Jacob Tsimerman receives the Fields Medal (photo by Allie Ippolito)

945d ago

Shrew

@shrewshrew.bsky.social

I just think it would be more newsworthy and a more acceptable excuse for sending me an email about it if the Fields medal were awarded to not-mathematicians for once For example when will my achievements in estimating the exact size of leftover container needed for these leftovers be recognized

1645d ago

Shrew3

Math has a lot of crimes to answer for. If it weren't for math we wouldn't have robot dogs or AI girlfriends or capitalism. Meanwhile my skill at estimating the volume of this leftover chili has only saved lives

Claire Gilder1

No one is there to celebrate when I eyeball the volume of leftover tomato sauce perfectly. But I know, and I hold those victories close to my heart.

3 sources

nature.comRising stars of mathematics awarded 2026 Fields Medal nytimes.comFour Young Mathematicians Receive Prestigious Fields Medals npr.orgIn a first, Chinese woman wins the prestigious Fields Medal

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2026 Fields Medals awarded to Yu Deng, John Pardon, Jacob Tsimerman and Hong Wang

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