Two Chinese mathematicians emerge as leading contenders for 2026 Fields Medal

Hong Wang

Chinese mathematician Hong Wang. Photo courtesy of IHES

Wang, 35, whose research focuses on harmonic analysis and geometric measure theory, two branches of mathematics known for tackling highly abstract and difficult problems, is among the leading contenders for this year's Fields Medal.

She rose to prominence in 2025 after she and collaborator Joshua Zahl proved the three-dimensional Kakeya conjecture, a problem that had challenged mathematicians for more than a century. According to the South China Morning Post, the result could have practical applications in imaging, data processing, cryptography and wireless communications, fields that depend on how wave packets interact.

Born in Guangxi, southern China, Wang was regarded as a child prodigy after scoring 653 out of 750 on China's national college entrance examination at age 16. She initially studied Earth and Space Sciences at Peking University before switching to mathematics.

She earned master's degrees from Paris-Sud University and Ecole Polytechnique in France before completing her doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the U.S. She later joined New York University and is now a professor at NYU's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and a permanent professor at France's Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques, a position she assumed in September 2025.

Her recent achievements have strengthened her standing as a leading contender for the Fields Medal. Since the prize was first awarded in 1936, only two women have received it: Maryam Mirzakhani in 2014 and Maryna Viazovska in 2022.

Yu Deng

Chinese mathematician Yu Deng. Photo courtesy of Clay Mathematics Institute

Deng, 37, a mathematics professor at the University of Chicago, U.S., has also emerged as one of the leading contenders for the 2026 Fields Medal. His research spans partial differential equations, fluid mechanics, harmonic analysis and statistical physics.

In two landmark papers released in 2024 and 2025 with collaborators Zaher Hani of the University of Michigan and Xiao Ma, Deng made a major breakthrough on the core of David Hilbert's Sixth Problem, a 125-year-old challenge to place the fundamental laws of physics on a rigorous mathematical foundation, as reported by Dong-A Science.

Experts say the work not only overcame a barrier that had stood for about 50 years by proving the long-time validity of the Boltzmann equation, but also introduced a powerful mathematical methodology for analyzing complex particle interactions, opening a path toward rigorously linking the microscopic motion of particles with the macroscopic equations governing fluids, according to Quanta Magazine.

Deng grew up in Shenzhen, southern China, and excelled in mathematics competitions from an early age. He won a gold medal at the 2006 International Mathematical Olympiad, placing sixth among nearly 500 contestants.

He enrolled at Peking University before transferring to the MIT, where he became a Putnam Fellow after placing among the top performers in the 2010 William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, one of North America's premier undergraduate mathematics contests. He earned his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2015 and later held positions at NYU's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and the University of Southern California before joining the University of Chicago.

In April, Deng and Hani received the Clay Research Award in recognition of their derivation of the Boltzmann equation for long times from a system of hard spheres. Deng has also received several prestigious honors, including the Oberwolfach Prize, the MCA Prize, and the ICCM Gold Medal.

Often described as the "Nobel Prize of mathematics," the Fields Medal is awarded every four years to up to four mathematicians under the age of 40. Winners receive an 18-karat gold medal bearing the image of Greek mathematician Archimedes and a cash prize of CAD15,000 (nearly US$11,000).

This year's winners will be announced during the opening ceremony of the International Congress of Mathematicians in Philadelphia on July 23.

If selected, Deng and Wang would join Shing-Tung Yau and Terence Tao among the most prominent mathematicians of Chinese descent to have received the Fields Medal.