Mathematicians Yu Deng, John Pardon, Jacob Tsimerman and Hong Wang have won the 2026 Fields Medal ' one of the most coveted awards in their discipline. Their names were revealed at the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) today in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The four winners represent a range of subfields of maths, from number theory to mathematical physics. They had all been rumoured as favourites to win the medal, which is awarded every four years to up to four mathematicians under the age of 40. The winners all work in North America, but two ' Deng and Wang ' were born and raised in China. They are only the second and third Chinese nationals to have earned a Fields Medal: Shing-Tung Yau, who is now at Tsinghua University in Beijing, won his in 1982, before either Deng or Wang were born. Wang is also only the third woman to win in the award's 90-year history, after the late Maryam Mirzakhani in 2014 and Maryna Viazovska in 2022. Deng, who is 37 and grew up in Shenzhen, did his PhD at Princeton University in New Jersey. He is now at the University of Chicago in Illinois, where he specializes in differential equations, which are often used to describe physical phenomena. He says that hearing he had won the medal made him 'really happy, not just for myself, but for the field I'm representing'....

A mathematical formula inscribed on a wall at the Maya site of Xultun in Guatemala has revealed the name of an important Maya mathematician-astronomer for the first time. Researchers suggest Sak Tahn Waax, or 'White-Chested Fox', was a scholar comparable with mathematical giants of the past. In a study published 14 July in the journal Antiquity1, Heather Hurst, an archaeologist at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, and her colleagues describe their analysis of a mathematical text from a chamber in Xultun that was originally excavated in 20112. The chamber's walls are painted with human figures and hieroglyphic texts. These include mathematical calculations based on astronomical calendars, which were used by the Maya people to decide the timing of events such as the inaugurations of kings. Hurst and her colleagues suggest that the chamber was a workspace for scribes making codices in the mid-eighth century ad. The authors analysed one set of hieroglyphs in particular, referred to as Text 19. Hurst says that this set of mathematical calculations expresses the relationships between several calendar systems in a playful manner that hasn't been seen before in Mayan texts. 'I think it was a mathematical flex. Somebody was saying 'I've got this amazing pattern, and it's so good it needs to be written down'. It was like, 'Boom! Mic drop!',' says Hurst....

The test ' part of a project called First Proof, which aims to evaluate the ability of AI to solve complex questions in mathematics ' posed ten research-level maths problems to four AI systems. A jury of anonymous human specialists in the relevant mathematical fields then assessed the models' answers. This test was the first of its kind to satisfy three key conditions simultaneously: first, it consisted of research-level maths questions; second, it involved problems that did not appear in the training data; and third, it was formally graded by mathematicians. The results were unveiled on the First Proof website on 10 June. These findings follow recent AI breakthroughs in solving maths problems. Last month, for example, a chatbot made by the technology firm OpenAI, in San Francisco, California, solved an 80-year-old maths challenge set by the late mathematician Paul Erdos. The First Proof team says that future iterations of the test could help researchers to judge how useful AI models could be for mathematicians; for example, in solving problems autonomously, checking proofs or acting as research assistants....

In a scene that could have easily featured in an episode of the US television sitcom The Big Bang Theory, the late US physicist Richard Feynman once turned a visit to a Thai restaurant he often dined at into a mathematical riddle: how adventurous should we be in trying new dishes' Feynman promptly solved this on a sheet of paper. Feynman's dilemma is one that will be familiar to any restaurant-goer. Do we keep ordering the best dish we've had so far, or do we explore the menu in the hope of finding something better' A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on 1 June probes this question, and includes experimental findings that participants adopt meal-choosing strategies that closely approximate Feynman's mathematical solution1. Behavioural scientist Shoham Choshen-Hillel at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem says that the authors wrote a 'super creative article'. 'The restaurant example stands in for decisions in many settings,' she adds. Real-life examples include choosing a home to buy, deciding whom to partner up with and selecting a parking spot....