Fields medals awarded to Hong Wang, Yu Deng, John Pardon and Jacob Tsimerman

The Fields medal, one of mathematics' most prestigious awards, was awarded Thursday to four researchers: Hong Wang and Yu Deng of China, John Pardon of the United States and Jacob Tsimerman of Canada.

The International Mathematical Union gives the award every four years to researchers under 40 for outstanding discoveries. The honor includes 15,000 Canadian dollars, reported by the source as USD $17,000, and a gold medallion bearing the likeness of Archimedes.

The medals were awarded during the opening ceremony of the International Congress of Mathematicians in Philadelphia.

Wang, 35, is the third woman to receive the Fields medal since it began in 1936. She is from China and teaches in France and at New York University in the United States. Previous women winners were Maryam Mirzakhani of Iran in 2014 and Maryna Viazovska of Ukraine in 2022.

Wang was honored for work that included a solution to a long-standing mathematical question linked to a conjecture posed in 1917 by Japanese mathematician Soichi Kakeya. Wang told AFP that Kakeya asked what the smallest area would be if a pencil were rotated completely around. She and colleague Josh Zahl found an answer by examining the problem in three-dimensional space rather than on a flat surface.

Deng teaches at the University of Chicago. At a press briefing, he described receiving the medal as a great honor and said he had long admired the mathematicians whose names appear on the winners' list.

Pardon, 37, represented the United States, which the source said holds the record for the most Fields medal winners. Tsimerman, 38, completed the group of four winners. He specializes in complex algebraic geometry and analytic number theory.

The awards came as mathematicians are debating the effect of artificial intelligence on their field. The source reported that some AI models have recently shown an ability to produce high-level mathematical proofs. In June, a group of mathematicians issued the Leiden Declaration, warning about scientific and ethical concerns and calling for frameworks and safeguards. The declaration said current automated methods can produce arguments that seem plausible but may be unreliable or incorrect and hard to distinguish from valid proofs.

Tsimerman told journalists that he will soon start a position in the safety division at OpenAI. He said the world is changing and that the mathematics profession will not continue in its current form. Deng said he expected AI to change mathematical research, but said he was more optimistic that AI would help mathematicians rather than replace them.