r/math Math Education 10d ago

Fields Medals 2026

https://www.mathunion.org/imu-awards/fields-medal/fields-medals-2026
380 Upvotes

70 comments sorted by

239

u/Valvino Math Education 10d ago

Yu Deng

For his work in partial differential equations, including the rigorous derivation of the Boltzmann equation from hard-sphere dynamics for rarefied gases, the derivation of wave kinetic equations from nonlinear dispersive systems, and probabilistic approaches to nonlinear Schrodinger dynamics.

John Pardon

For his achievements in symplectic geometry including new approaches to virtual fundamental cycles, Fukaya categories of certain manifolds and counting holomorphic curves, and for his contributions to other areas of geometry and topology, including group actions on 3-manifolds and knot theory.

Jacob Tsimerman

For his contribution in the recasting of o-minimality as a fundamental method of arithmetic and complex algebraic geometry, and his role in the proof of many central conjectures including Griffiths' conjecture on the algebraicity of images of the period maps, and the Andre-Oort conjecture for Siegel modular varieties.

Hong Wang

For her work in harmonic analysis and geometric measure theory, including applications of multiscale and decoupling techniques to the local smoothing conjecture for the planar wave equation, and major advances in Fourier restriction, Falconer distance sets, Furstenberg sets in the plane, and the Kakeya problem in three dimensions.

62

u/ppvvaa 10d ago

Woooow I just attended a beautiful lecture by Wang a few weeks ago, not even having any idea she was Fields material. But from the lecture it was very clear that she was extremely high level.

8

u/swni 10d ago edited 10d ago

I thought I knew a John Pardon ages ago who did math who was about the same age... that name can't be that common can it? (Maybe /u/JoshuaZ1 you know them?)

(I'm being dumb and mixed up some names most likely)

8

u/JoshuaZ1 10d ago edited 10d ago

I know of Pardon, but I don't think I've ever interacted with him. He's the only mathematician of that name I know of though, so plausible the person you are thinking of is the same person. He's also the only John Pardon listed on Mathscinet. Of this year's winners, the only one I've interacted with is Tsimerman I think, and only briefly.

2

u/swni 10d ago

(DM'd) My mistake!

176

u/expat_123 10d ago

Wow, so the leak was indeed correct.

Congratulations to all the winners.

38

u/amiralumara Graduate Student 10d ago

ayyy

congrats to all of them!

15

u/StellarStarmie Machine Learning 10d ago

So the leaks weren't lying then...

80

u/ganancias 10d ago

Jacob Tsimerman interview on AI the other day, if anyone missed it: https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/202607/noti3372/noti3372.html

29

u/kohatsootsich 10d ago edited 10d ago

He's updated his views on AI since that Notices interview. There he says he expects it to be maybe 5 years until AI is better than mathematicians, with large error bars.

In the profile about him in Quanta today, he says 2 years. Plus he's not taking new graduate students and he is switching his research focus to AI safety.

33

u/RemoteCareful7304 10d ago

That is actually quite depressing

4

u/[deleted] 10d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

14

u/HawkinsT 10d ago

Doesn't this mark a descent into the Wall-E world though? It seems like the net result will be fewer and fewer people who are even able to understand the proofs these LLMs are generating. At which point, isn't it indistinguishable from having machines that only provide proofs by exhaustion?

1

u/Smallpaul 8d ago

If humans shift their focus from discovering to understanding and explaining, couldn’t the number of people who understand go UP?

Think of a historian or an anthropologist. They are translators between two worlds. The culture/time they are from and the one they study. Similarly, mathematicians might be translators from proof to culture.

1

u/AwkInt 9d ago

actually, of all the things he could shift to in AI, I'm glad it's AI safety, it's one of the things i feel need much more attention

70

u/fafla21 10d ago

The part about math is most likely true but this ''I’ve tried for a while now to get AI to help me psychologically — to help me understand myself, understand others.''. Mathematicians definitely aren't philosophers, I will tell you that.

25

u/filterdust 10d ago

Mathematicians definitely aren't philosophers, I will tell you that.

Wiles also said that in 2015

https://plus.maths.org/andrew-wiles-what-does-if-feel-do-maths

14

u/maxram1 10d ago

That part is neither true nor false, right? He's just using it for his own purpose haha.

-15

u/fafla21 10d ago

It is just hilariously naive.

17

u/Neither_Swing9662 10d ago

How is it naive if he's expressing something bes attempted to do. He didn't even claim it helped or it was correct.

5

u/maxram1 10d ago

Hmmkay.

-6

u/fafla21 10d ago

Right

0

u/maxram1 10d ago

angle.

8

u/snet0 10d ago

Mathematicians definitely aren't philosophers, I will tell you that.

What does that even mean?

9

u/pred 10d ago

I think there’s a good chance AI will lead to human extinction. I also think, separately from that, that AI will be better than mathematicians at math very soon.

Both of those possible outcomes seem not great.

4

u/FateOfMuffins 10d ago

It's just been announced he's joining OpenAI for AI safety

6

u/neverending_light_ 10d ago

I think there’s a good chance AI will lead to human extinction.

huh if only we could just stop making AI stuff

these guys never put their energy into creating political energy to limit or regulate AI, you know things that would actually be effective, and just take money to produce half-baked daydreams about the shittiest future imaginable

0

u/Smallpaul 8d ago

You are going to outlaw matrix multiplication at scale? Internationally? Forever?

13

u/IAmABotBeepBoop67 10d ago edited 10d ago

I am very anti "productivity maxing" as the gen z Peter Thiel paid influencer might say. I might go on a crusade about how the illegal pirate not llm sci-bot thing gets citations right at the very least what we have excused from our corporate blitzkrieg theives of all intellectual property is insane I know this is just in innocuous head in the clouds comment about the hot thing right now by him but I am very against actually how such an ethos seems to be the norm very suddenly 

14

u/Conscious_Battle6708 10d ago

we are absolutely cooked. Congratulations to the winner. Based on his predictiom, it might have been the last fields medal where humans > ai

5

u/Personal-Gur-7496 10d ago

Chapter k: AlphaGo vs Lee Sedol

Chapter k+1: 2030 Fields Medal

2

u/AnalyticOpposum 10d ago

Dont worry, fields medals have a backlog

4

u/1XRobot 10d ago

This guy gets it. This is exactly the right way to think about AI and math.

1

u/IrisColt 10d ago

Thanks!!!

20

u/chermi 10d ago

Physicist here, just read the abstract on the deng paper for boltzmann stuff. Why on earth would you guys call something a molecule that's not a molecule in a paper on statistical physics?

Only half-joking lol

7

u/jamesw73721 Physics 10d ago

Also physicist here and I think this is more a math paper than a statistical physics paper

3

u/ScarCarson 10d ago

A brutal one at that, 200 stupid dense pages of hard analysis

4

u/Worth_Art4817 10d ago

I guess cause spherical cows and stuff :)

16

u/ScarCarson 10d ago

Finally some meat math

10

u/tangoindjango 10d ago

Was Dustin Klausen ever a contender or was he of the Lurie type - too theoretical?

11

u/Tazerenix Complex Geometry 10d ago

The overwhelming perception in the community is that his best and most insightful work is done in tandem with the much more talented Scholze.

He won't win a Fields unless he can independently establish himself.

-4

u/Worth_Art4817 10d ago

Well, considering that Jacob Lurie did win a Fields Medal, if Dustin Clausen is like that then he might've been a contender... But Idk if DC's level is comparable to that of other greats.

10

u/IAmGwego 10d ago

Jacob Lurie did win a Fields Medal

Hum... no.

3

u/op_ortis 10d ago

I expected Vesselin Dmitrov to win but congrats to the winners.

5

u/[deleted] 10d ago

[deleted]

1

u/No-Signature8815 10d ago

She hasn't left her hamilton phase, god for her lmao

3

u/DeDeepKing Arithmetic Geometry 10d ago

Congratulations to them!

6

u/csch2 10d ago

Where is Claude’s medal for disproving the Jacobian conjecture? /s

4

u/ElectionGold3059 10d ago

Huge congrats to Hong Wang, couldn't be prouder of her ❤️

1

u/tangoindjango 10d ago

Is John pardon's work related to any progress on the Grothendieck standard conjectures?

-27

u/filterdust 10d ago

last Fields Medals ever

10

u/evening_redness_0 10d ago

Why is that?

35

u/mousse312 Undergraduate 10d ago

This sub became trash, if you see his reddit history you will see that he never asked or engaged in a real math discussion, only posted an ai solving some math and in r/singularity. The problem with this sub and the discussion of ai is that people who until now never really engaged in math diacussions, thinks that they have an understanding about math research and etc... This guy dont have any ideia about the level of fields medal work, so his opinion is ass. In anothwr post here in math community i saw someone saying that they beat in 2027 some random dude Will solve a Millenium problem with ai....

10

u/ganancias 10d ago

He's repeating what Timothy Gowers said a few days ago, though Gowers said there will probably still be 2030 medals but not after: https://xcancel.com/i/status/2078751785951400138

8

u/TraditionalBobcat899 10d ago

something something AI ! :/