For the first time, two Chinese nationals have been awarded the prestigious Fields Medal for mathematics achievement, a win hailed across China as a milestone in the country’s bid to cement its role as a science and technology powerhouse.
According to CNN, Wang Hong and Deng Yu were named on Thursday, July 23, as among four laureates of the top prize, which is awarded every four years to outstanding mathematicians under 40 by the International Mathematical Union.
The two other winners this year come from Canada and the United States.
The 35-year-old Wang is the third woman to win in the award’s 90-year history.
Netizens celebrate historic milestone
China’s social media has lit up in celebration of their achievement, with the top two trending topics on China’s X-like Weibo Friday morning discussing the win.
State media and other news sites were awash with articles about Wang and Deng and what their success means for the country, even as both pursued their academic careers outside of China after studying at Peking University, a top-ranked research university in Beijing.
A social media user wrote, “This is a landmark achievement for Chinese mathematics. It’s the realization of a dream generations of Chinese mathematicians have shared: building China into a mathematical powerhouse!”
Other posts celebrated Wang’s win as a breakthrough for women in STEM fields, with another social media commentator calling it “a hard slap in the face to those who have long preached that boys are better at mathematics than girls.”
Wang, who grew up in Guilin in southern China and is now a professor at New York University and the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques in France, was awarded for her work resolving a decades-old problem in harmonic analysis and geometric measure theory.
Meanwhile, 37-year-old Deng is a University of Chicago professor who grew up in the tech hub of Shenzhen, won for his progress on partial differential equations.
The outpouring of pride and excitement is a testament to the importance of academic achievement in China, where top scientists can achieve celebrity status and students annually take one of the most competitive and challenging college entrance exams in the world.
