The Fields Medal
John Charles Fields' Will established the Fields Medal, which has played the role of the Nobel Prize in Mathematics.
The International Congress of Mathematicians at Zurich in 1932 adopted his proposal, and the Fields Medal was first awarded at the next congress, held at Oslo in 1936. Fields Medals were not awarded during World War II so the second Fields Medals were not awarded until 1950.
Fields wished that the awards should recognize both existing mathematical work and also the promise of future achievement. To fit with these wishes Fields Medals may only be awarded to mathematicans under the age of 40.
In 2026 medals were awarded to:
More details of the Fields medals are available at the IMU web-site
The International Congress of Mathematicians at Zurich in 1932 adopted his proposal, and the Fields Medal was first awarded at the next congress, held at Oslo in 1936. Fields Medals were not awarded during World War II so the second Fields Medals were not awarded until 1950.
Fields wished that the awards should recognize both existing mathematical work and also the promise of future achievement. To fit with these wishes Fields Medals may only be awarded to mathematicans under the age of 40.
In 2026 medals were awarded to:
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.
The list of winners is given below.
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.
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1936 L V Ahlfors
1936 J Douglas 1950 L Schwartz 1950 A Selberg 1954 K Kodaira 1954 J-P Serre 1958 K F Roth 1958 R Thom 1962 L V Hörmander 1962 J W Milnor 1966 M F Atiyah 1966 P J Cohen 1966 A Grothendieck 1966 S Smale 1970 A Baker 1970 H Hironaka 1970 S P Novikov 1970 J G Thompson 1974 E Bombieri 1974 D B Mumford 1978 P R Deligne 1978 C L Fefferman 1978 G A Margulis 1978 D G Quillen |
1982 A Connes
1982 W P Thurston 1982 S-T Yau 1986 S Donaldson 1986 G Faltings 1986 M Freedman 1990 V Drinfeld 1990 V Jones 1990 S Mori 1990 E Witten 1994 P-L Lions 1994 J-C Yoccoz 1994 J Bourgain 1994 E Zelmanov 1998 R Borcherds 1998 T Gowers 1998 M Kontsevich 1998 C McMullen 2002 L Lafforgue 2002 V Voevodsky 2006 A Okounkov 2006 G Perelman (who declined it) 2006 T Tao 2006 W Werner |
2010 E Lindenstrauss
2010 Ngô B C 2010 S Smirnov 2010 C Villani 2014 A Ávila 2014 M Bhargava 2014 M Hairer 2014 M Mirzakhani 2018 P Scholze 2018 A Figalli 2018 A Venkatesh 2018 C Birkar 2022 H Duminil-Copin 2022 J Huh 2022 J Maynard 2022 M Viazovska 2026 Yu Deng 2026 J Pardon 2026 J Tsimerman 2026 Hong Wang |
More details of the Fields medals are available at the IMU web-site