
Living Fully in the Math World Means Threading the Needle
Focus, commitment, and insight resulted in a “once in a century” proof. Hong Wang is now the third woman to win a Fields Medal.

Quanta Magazine
Thursday 23.7.2026
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Every four years, the math world’s preeminent awards are given to the finest minds of a generation. The young winners — all under 40 on the first day of the year — have reshaped mathematics and theoretical computer science. Here are their stories.

Focus, commitment, and insight resulted in a “once in a century” proof. Hong Wang is now the third woman to win a Fields Medal.

Determination and effort propelled Jacob Tsimerman to the top of the math world. But now that he’s won a Fields Medal, he worries that the field is in jeopardy.

John Pardon sees connections between different areas of math that others don’t. For that, he’s now been awarded a Fields Medal.

Before he won a Fields Medal for his pioneering work balancing randomness and order, Yu Deng first had to achieve equilibrium in his own life.

By Ben Brubaker
Shayan Oveis Gharan has won the Abacus Medal for applying tools from across mathematics to computer science.