Two Chinese win world's top Maths prize for solving century's-old problems

What the report says

Nile Post, carrying a BBC report, said Chinese mathematicians Hong Wang and Yu Deng have become China’s first Fields Medal winners, sharing the latest awards with John Pardon of the United States and Jacon Tsimerman of Canada. The report said each recipient received 15,000 Canadian dollars, about $10,500 or £8,000, after the medals were presented on Thursday in the United States.

Wang, 35, who is reported to teach in the United States and France, was recognised for work connected to a question raised by Japanese mathematician Soichi Kakeya in 1917 about the minimum area swept out when an object is rotated. Nile Post reported that Wang and Josh Zahl studied the problem in three-dimensional space and published their work last year. The article said Wang is only the third woman to receive the medal.

Deng, 37, a mathematics professor at the University of Chicago, was honoured for progress on a problem associated with David Hilbert’s 1900 list of major mathematical challenges. The report described his work as addressing how collective behaviour can be derived from the movement of individual particles, using gases as the setting for the solution.

The Fields Medal is widely viewed as mathematics’ closest equivalent to a Nobel Prize and is awarded every four years to leading mathematicians under 40. Nile Post said the announcement drew major attention on Chinese social media and in Chinese media coverage, with commentary focusing on its significance for the country’s mathematics community.