1. Hong Wang
Wang, born in 1991, is currently drawing international media attention. She is an associate professor at the Courant Institute, New York University, US.
Hong Wang's main research areas include harmonic analysis and geometric measure theory, fields known for their difficult and abstract problems. In 2025, Wang and her colleague Joshua Zahl made waves in the mathematical community by successfully solving the Kakeya conjecture in 3-dimensional space, a problem that had challenged scientists for over 100 years.
Born in Guangxi, Trung Quoc, Wang was considered a "child prodigy" when she entered Peking University at 16. She later earned her master's degree from Universite Paris Sud and Ecole Polytechnique, France, and her doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - MIT (US).
She is also a permanent professor at France's Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques (IHES), the first woman to hold this position in the institute's history. Notably, eight of the 13 previous permanent professors at IHES have won the Fields Medal.
2. Jacob Tsimerman
Tsimerman, born in 1988, is a professor at the University of Toronto, Canada. According to the university's website, he is considered a leading number theorist of his generation.
Tsimerman's research primarily focuses on analytic number theory and arithmetic geometry. He investigates integer solutions to certain types of polynomial equations. One of his most notable achievements is his contribution to proving the long-standing Andre-Oort conjecture, a significant milestone in modern mathematics that connects special points with general geometric structures.
Born in Nga, Tsimerman developed an interest in mathematical puzzles at the age of three. During high school, he won two gold medals at the International Mathematical Olympiad in 2003 and 2004. He studied mathematics at the University of Toronto and received his doctorate from Princeton University, US, in 2011.
3. Jack Thorne
Thorne, born in 1987, is a professor in the Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics at Cambridge University, England. He is best known for his research in algebraic number theory and the Langlands Program.
According to the Royal Society, he has a series of important works, including proving new cases of functoriality for automorphic modular forms, the modularity of elliptic curves over any class of cyclotomic towers, and the existence of Galois representations associated with regular algebraic automorphic forms.
Thorne completed his undergraduate studies at Cambridge, then earned his doctorate from Harvard University, US, in 2012. At 32, he was one of the youngest individuals inducted into the Royal Society, a council comprising many distinguished scientists and the oldest continuously operating scientific academy in the world.
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From left: Jacob Tsinerman, Hong Wang and Jack Thorne. Photo: University of Toronto, IHES and Royal Society |
4. Javier Fresan
Fresan, born in 1987, from Tay Ban Nha, is currently a professor at Jussieu – Institut de Mathematiques de Paris Rive Gauche, Sorbonne University, France. His research focuses on number theory and algebraic geometry.
He is recognized for his contributions to solving a problem posed by Carl Siegel in 1929 concerning the nature of E-functions, which relate to objects in geometry and periods.
Fresan studied at Universite Paris-Nord, completed postdoctoral research at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich) and the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics, Duc. He is on the editorial board of two French mathematical journals: Annales scientifiques de l'Ecole normale superieure and Commentarii Mathematikai Helvetici.
5. John Pardon
Pardon, born in 1989, is a professor and permanent member of the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics at Stony Brook University, New York, US. Pardon's research lies in the interconnected fields of geometry and topology.
As a mathematics student at Princeton University, he solved a 30-year-old problem by the renowned Russian mathematician Mihkail Gromov concerning the deformation of knots. His recent research focuses on pseudoholomorphic curves in commutative manifolds.
According to Stony Brook University's website, Pardon graduated as valedictorian in 2011, then earned his doctorate from Stanford University in 2015. He has taught at both Stanford University and Princeton.
6. Sam Raskin
Raskin is a leading theorist in geometric representation theory. He is currently a professor in the Mathematics Department at Yale University, US. His research focuses on the geometric Langlands program.
In late 2024, Raskin and his colleagues published a manuscript over 900 pages long, successfully addressing a significant part of the geometric Langlands program. This is considered the "Rosetta Stone" of mathematics, helping to connect seemingly unrelated fields such as algebra and quantum physics.
Raskin earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Chicago and his doctorate from Harvard University in 2014.
The Fields Medal, often called the "Nobel of Mathematics", is a prestigious award given to a maximum of four mathematicians under 40 years old, presented every four years. The selection committee is appointed by the Executive Committee of the International Mathematical Union (IMU). Laureates receive a 14-carat gold medal engraved with Archimedes' image and a prize of 15.000 CAD (approximately 270 trieu dong).
This year's award ceremony will take place during the opening session of the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in July 2026 in Philadelphia, US.
Khanh Linh (General)
