Yesterday was a big day for mathematics. We look at the winners of the Fields Medals.
Good morning. The Trump administration has imposed new tariffs on goods from more than 80 countries . The tariffs, along with the war in Iran, are threatening the U.S. economy .
We have more on that below. But first: Yesterday was a big day for mathematics — particularly for four young mathematicians. I enlisted my colleague Evan Gorelick, The Morning’s best number cruncher, to explain their achievements.
The Fields Medals are a quadrennial happening, like the Olympic Games and the World Cup. Each comes with 15,000 Canadian dollars (about $10,600) and a gold coin emblazoned with the bearded face of Archimedes, the Greek polymath who lived in the third century B.C. Nobody really knows what he looked like, so the artist took a swing.
The medals, awarded in Philadelphia yesterday to four scholars, are sometimes called the Nobel Prizes of mathematics. But while the actual Nobels can be notoriously tardy — awarded decades after major work — the Fields are conferred at the dawn of a mathematician’s career. You have to be under 40 to be considered. That’s younger than the median age of first-time American home buyers .
This year’s winners include two people born in China, one of them the third woman to receive a Fields in the 90 years they’ve existed. Another of the four medalists solved a geometry puzzle that’s a whole lot harder than it looks. The last says he’s leaving pure math and pivoting to artificial intelligence. (#awkward!)
Kenneth Chang, a science reporter who has covered the Fields Medals five times since 2006, spoke to each of this year’s winners. Take a gander, and fight the urge to feel inadequate.