Fields Medal 2026: Four mathematicians win world's highest honour in mathematics

Yu Deng, John Pardon, Jacob Tsimerman, and Hong Wang — pose on stage after receiving their Fields Medals during the International Congress of Mathematicians in Philadelphia on Thursday. PIC/AFP

The prestigious 2026 Fields Medals, widely regarded as the highest honour in mathematics, were awarded to four mathematicians during the opening ceremony of the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in Philadelphia on Thursday.

The International Mathematical Union (IMU) announced the winners as Yu Deng of the University of Chicago, John Pardon of Stony Brook University, Jacob Tsimerman of the University of Toronto, and Hong Wang of New York University and France's Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques (IHES).

Awarded every four years, the Fields Medal recognises outstanding mathematical achievements and future promise among mathematicians under the age of 40. Each recipient receives a gold medal bearing the image of the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes and a cash prize of 15,000 Canadian dollars.

Announcing the awards, IMU President Hiraku Nakajima said the four medalists reflected the "depth, originality and vitality of contemporary mathematics".

Yu Deng was recognised for his work in partial differential equations, including the rigorous derivation of the Boltzmann equation from hard-sphere dynamics and advances in nonlinear Schrodinger dynamics. His work addresses one of the long-standing challenges in mathematical physics by deriving fundamental physical laws from first principles.

John Pardon received the honour for breakthroughs in symplectic geometry, topology and knot theory. His work includes proving the two-decade-old MNOP conjecture, with implications for representation theory, symplectic topology and quantum physics.

Other leading mathematicians honoured with Abacus, Chern, Gauss, and Leelavati prizes

Jacob Tsimerman was honoured for extending o-minimal techniques in arithmetic and complex algebraic geometry, including proving Griffiths' conjecture on the algebraicity of images of period maps. His research is closely linked to the Hodge conjecture, one of mathematics' Millennium Prize Problems.

Hong Wang was recognised for contributions to harmonic analysis and geometric measure theory. She solved the three-dimensional Kakeya problem, a century-old mathematical challenge that has significant implications for harmonic analysis, partial differential equations and related fields.

In addition to the Fields Medals, the IMU announced several other major honours. Shayan Oveis Gharan of the University of Washington received the Abacus Medal for contributions to computer science, Graeme Segal of the University of Oxford was awarded the Chern Medal for lifetime achievement, Yurii Nesterov of Belgium's University of Louvain received the Carl Friedrich Gauss Prize for applied mathematics, and Hannah Fry of the University of Cambridge won the Leelavati Prize for public outreach in mathematics.

The 2026 International Congress of Mathematicians is being held in Philadelphia from July 23 to 30. It is the first time the Congress has been hosted in the United States since 1986. The event brings together mathematicians from around the world to present research and discuss developments across the discipline.

(With AFP inputs)