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,...
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