Field Medal Winners were announced recently. Yu Deng, John Pardon, Jacob Tsimerman, and Hong Wang jointly won the Field Medal. It is awarded to mathematicians under 40 years of age. When I researched their work and stories it was fascinating to see that both Yu Deng and Hong Wang studied Mathematics at the Peking University at the same time. In fact, Dr. Wang wasn’t found eligible to study mathematics when she joined the university and later on given a transfer from earth sciences. While Dr. Deng was actually good at a strategy board game Go and participated in National level tournaments. I read this quote from him
“Either Go or math. Since I lost, I decided to move my focus to math.”
Third winner, Dr. Pardon is a son of a mathematics professor so I’m sure his dad must be proud. It is a coincidence that he is fluent in Chinese. He learnt the language because he wanted a challenge. Fourth winner, Dr. Tsimerman is the first mathematician from a Canadian University to win a Field Medal but I read that he is joining OpenAI.
I look forward to researching more about their work.
Field Medal Go Hong Wang Jacob Tsimerman John Pardon Mathematics Yu Deng
Last modified: September 21, 2026
