Fields Medal winners announced in Philadelphia at math congress

Four mathematicians were awarded the 2026 Fields Medals in Philadelphia, with Hong Wang becoming only the third woman ever to take the prize.

The medals were announced at the opening ceremony of the International Congress of Mathematicians on July 23, followed by a public press conference. A brass-band performance by the West Philadelphia Orchestra helped set the scene for the announcement.

The International Mathematical Union awards the Fields Medal only once every four years. The prize is meant to recognize both work already done and the promise of future achievement, and the committee is asked to choose at least two winners, with a strong preference for four. Laureates must be younger than 40, and each medal carries CA$15,000.

Yu Deng of the University of Chicago was honored for work in partial differential equations, including research tied to the equations that describe fluid mechanics. That is the math behind how liquids and gases move when the system is too complicated for a simple formula, work that can shape how scientists model flow in physics and engineering.

John Pardon of Stony Brook University was recognized for work in symplectic geometry, a branch of mathematics that studies spaces where motion and energy are built into the geometry itself. Jacob Tsimerman of the University of Toronto won for advances in number theory and algebraic geometry, including a proof of the André-Oort conjecture and work that extended o-minimal techniques, tools mathematicians use to understand when complicated equations conceal a more rigid structure.

Hong Wang, now at New York University and the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques, was awarded for work on the Kakeya conjecture. The problem asks how small a shape can be while still containing a line in every direction, a question that sits near harmonic analysis and geometric measure theory.