2026 Fields Medal: Hong Wang becomes third woman to win in 90-year history

Wang has become the third woman to win the Fields Medal, after Maryam Mirzakhani and Maryna Viazovska; Wang and Deng are also the first Chinese nationals to win since 1982

Published: July 27, 2026 10:41 am IST

By Vasudevan Mukunth

The Fields Medal — one of the top honours in mathematics — for 2026 has been awarded to Yu Deng, John Pardon, Jacob Tsimerman, and Hong Wang.

The Medal is awarded every four years and recognises important contributions to mathematics research by individuals who are younger than 40 at the time of receiving the award.

Among this year's laureates, Hong Wang has become the third woman to win the Medal in its 90-year history, following Maryam Mirzakhani (2014) and Maryna Viazovska (2022). Wang and Deng are also the first Chinese nationals to win since Shing-Tung Yau in 1982.

Yu Deng

• Born: 1989 in Henan province; grew up in Shenzhen
• Won a gold medal at the 2006 International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO)
• Became a Putnam Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2010; obtained his BS in 2011
• Completed his PhD from Princeton in 2015
• Courant Instructor at New York University (2015–2018)
• Assistant professor, then full professor at the University of Southern California (2018–2024)
• Since September 2024: Professor of mathematics at the University of Chicago

In 1900, German mathematician David Hilbert published a list of 23 problems he believed would shape 20th-century mathematics. Deng, together with Zaher Hani and Xiao Ma, solved one part of the sixth problem, building some of the strongest bridges to date between observable physics — such as water flowing down a stream — and the mathematics that explains it, including the rules governing how individual particles interact.

John Pardon

• Born: 1989
• Solved a 30-year-old problem on the distortion of knots while still an undergraduate at Princeton, winning the Morgan Prize in 2012
• Earned his PhD from Stanford in 2015 under Yakov Eliashberg
• Clay Research Fellow (2015–2020)
• Assistant professor at Stanford; professor at Princeton (2016–2023)
• Since September 2022: Professor at the Simons Centre for Geometry and Physics, Stony Brook University

Pardon works in symplectic geometry — the mathematics used to describe how physical systems move, such as how a rock rolls down a hill or how planets orbit stars. He won the Fields Medal for solving the 20-year-old MNOP conjecture, which concerns counting the number of curves on complex geometric shapes called Calabi-Yau 3-folds. Along the way, he developed a branch known as virtual foundation cycles, which other mathematicians have since used to solve similar problems.

Hong Wang

• Born: 1991 in a village in Guangxi
• Skipped two grades in primary school
• Entered Peking University at age 16 to study earth sciences