Wang Hong, a post-90s mathematician, has won two major awards regarded as the "barometers of the Fields Medal". Even "Genius Wei" came to attend her lectures, and Terence Tao praised her highly.

[Introduction] Just now, Chinese mathematician Wang Hong won two world - class mathematics awards in succession - the Salem Prize and the Gold Award of the ICCM Mathematics Award. Terence Tao personally sent his congratulations.

Today, 34 - year - old Chinese mathematician Wang Hong won the 2025 Salem Prize.

She won this honor for her outstanding contributions to major unsolved problems in the fields of harmonic analysis and geometric measure theory.

In the industry, it is known as the "wind vane of the Fields Medal".

Meanwhile, Vesselin Dimitrov, a mathematics professor at the California Institute of Technology, also won the Salem Prize for his fundamental contributions in Diophantine geometry and number theory.

Terence Tao himself sent his congratulations to the two mathematicians at the first time.

Just yesterday, Wang Hong also won the "Gold Award of the ICCM Mathematics Award". Similarly, the ICCM is known as the "Fields Medal" in the Chinese - speaking mathematics community.

Almost at the same time, Wang Hong won two wind - vane awards in succession. Perhaps, she is only one step away from the Fields Medal.

Previously, Wang Hong once topped the odds list of the 2026 Fields Medal winners.

Is the Fields Medal a sure thing?

The Salem Prize was established in 1968 to commemorate the French mathematician Raphaël Salem.

It is mainly to reward mathematicians under the age of 40 who have made outstanding contributions in Fourier Analysis or related fields.

There has always been a saying in the academic circle -

Young people who have won the Salem Prize may win the Fields Medal in the future.

This is not groundless. After all, ten former Salem Prize winners have really won the Fields Medal.

Among them is the "genius mathematician" Terence Tao. After winning the Salem Prize in 2000, he won the Fields Medal six years later.

Compiled and referenced by ChatGPT

According to statistics, the probability of winning the Fields Medal within 10 years after winning the Salem Prize is amazing.

With her breakthroughs in classic problems such as the Kakeya conjecture, Wang Hong also has a very high probability of becoming the next Fields Medal winner.

Even Shing - Tung Yau, the first Chinese Fields Medal winner, once highly praised her, saying that "Wang Hong is the greatest and most important Chinese scholar of the younger generation."

It is worth mentioning that in June this year, Wang Hong appeared at a lecture at Peking University. "The monk - like mathematician" Wei Dongyi instantly became a student listening to the class. He carefully took notes in the first row and discussed problems with her after class.

This is enough to confirm Wang Hong's authoritative position in the entire mathematics community and the wide recognition of everyone.

A post - 90s from the "madhouse" of Peking University

When it comes to Wang Hong, few people outside the mathematics circle know about her.

In 1991, she was born in Guilin, a place known as having the most beautiful scenery under heaven. Her parents are both ordinary teachers at Shazi Middle School in Pingle County, Guangxi. The family has a strong academic atmosphere.

However, fate seems to have set a big test for this intelligent girl very early.

Started school at 5 and skipped two grades

At the age of 4, an accidental scald on her right arm made Wang Hong go through a hard time.

But this did not become a shadow in her heart, nor did it shake her eagerness for knowledge and determination to learn in the slightest.

Before starting school, under the careful guidance of her parents, at the age of 5, she had already mastered all the knowledge of the first grade. With her super - strong learning ability, she skipped directly to the second grade of primary school.

In terms of learning methods, Wang Hong has her own unique rhythm. She doesn't wait for the teacher's teaching progress. Instead, she is used to self - studying the textbooks for the whole semester before each semester starts.

Facing difficult problems, she rarely asks the teacher for help directly. She prefers to think independently, consult materials, or discuss with classmates.

This learning habit not only cultivated her strong self - learning ability, but also shaped her ability to think independently and solve problems, laying a solid foundation for her future academic research.

In the sixth grade, Wang Hong skipped a grade again and was directly promoted to junior high school.

In the 2004 high - school entrance examination, she was successfully admitted to Guilin Middle School. In this key high school full of top students, her grades finally rose from outside the top 100 in the whole grade to the top 10.

Chasing the dream of mathematics

In 2007, when most of her peers were still struggling for the college entrance examination, 16 - year - old Wang Hong was admitted to the School of Earth and Space Sciences at Peking University in advance with an excellent score of 653.

However, out of her love for mathematics, she resolutely transferred to the School of Mathematical Sciences a year later.

During this period, her tutor was Professor Wang Lizhong, and she completed her graduation thesis on "Classical Hodge theory and Hodge theory on metric spaces" under the guidance of Professor Liu Zhangju.

After graduating from undergraduate studies, Wang Hong didn't stop her pursuit of knowledge.

In 2011 and 2014, she obtained a mathematics degree from École Polytechnique and a master's degree in mathematics from Paris - Sud Université respectively.

Then in 2019, she completed her doctoral degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), with Larry Guth as her supervisor.

After graduating with a doctorate, Wang Hong's academic path has become even more brilliant.

In June 2021, after completing her post - doctoral research at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, she joined the University of California, Los Angeles as an assistant professor in July of the same year, starting her academic career.

In 2023, she joined the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University as an associate professor and was promoted to a full professor in 2025.

Now, she is also a permanent mathematics professor at the Institute of Advanced Scientific Studies in France.

Cracking the three - dimensional Kakeya conjecture

In recent years, Wang Hong has become well - known in the mathematics circle for her outstanding research in the field of the Kakeya conjecture.

Her main research focus is on harmonic analysis and geometric measure theory. Previously, she has made outstanding contributions to major problems such as the Fourier restriction conjecture and the Falconer distance set conjecture.

In 2022, she won the prestigious Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prize for her breakthrough research in the restriction conjecture, the local smoothing conjecture and related problems.

This award specifically recognizes outstanding female mathematicians who have obtained their doctorates in the past two years.

In 2023, she won the Best Paper Award of the ICCM.

In addition to winning numerous awards, her research results often appear in top - tier international journals such as the Annals of Mathematics, Inventiones Mathematicae, and the Duke Mathematical Journal.

In 2025, she collaborated with Professor Joshua Zahl from Columbia University. With a 127 - page proof, they officially announced that the Kakeya set conjecture has been settled.

Paper link: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2502.17655

At that time, Terence Tao, the Fields Medal winner, said excitedly:

One of the most notable unsolved problems in geometric measure theory - the Kakeya set conjecture - has finally been proven in three - dimensional space by Wang Hong and Joshua Zahl.

So, what is the "Kakeya conjecture"? It actually evolved from the Kakeya needle problem.

In 1917, Japanese mathematician S. Kakeya proposed a question -

In a plane, what is the minimum area required for a unit - length needle (line segment) to rotate 180° around itself?

If it rotates around its mid - point for a full circle, the area is that of a semi - circle, which is π/4.

But Kakeya