1. Who is the winner of the Fields Medal?
The 2022 Fields Prize was announced in Helsinki, Finland, on July 5, local time. The four winners are: Hugo Menear-Copin, a French mathematician and French Institute of Advanced International Studies; Xu Jill, a Korean-American mathematician and professor at Princeton University; James Maynard, a British mathematician and professor at Oxford University; And Maryna Vyazov, a Ukrainian mathematician and professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. ?
2. The reputation of the Fields Medal
The gold content of the Fields Prize is precisely because it belongs to the International Congress of Mathematicians, which means that you have been recognized by the whole mathematical community. It is worth mentioning that in order to fill the vacancy that there is no mathematics prize in the Nobel Prize, the Norwegian government established the Abel Prize according to the standards of the Nobel Prize. It can be predicted that the Abel Prize will be closer to the Nobel Prize in Mathematics in the future. Because the Abel Prize is a lifetime prize, there is no age limit.
3. The birth of the Fields Medal
The Fields Prize was originally established to quell the controversy in the international mathematics field. After the First World War, there were differences in the international mathematics field. French and Belgian mathematicians insist that mathematicians from Germany and its allies are not allowed to participate in the International Congress of Mathematicians. Fields asked not to be named after anyone or place, and said that "the Committee should have as much freedom as possible" to decide the winners. 1932, the International Congress of Mathematicians appointed the Fields Prize Committee, and the first winner was elected in 1936. At first, each session was awarded to two mathematicians, and 1966 was increased to a maximum of four.
Postscript: When selecting the winners, the early Fields Prize Committee deliberately avoided those young mathematicians with outstanding achievements and status, saying that they didn't need more encouragement, and chose mathematicians who did important work but didn't get enough attention, not only to help potential young mathematicians and promote the development of various fields of mathematics in the future, but also to avoid disputes among countries on the grounds that they were not the best winners.