Ukrainian mathematician awarded prestigious Fields Medal

Ukrainian mathematician Maryna Viazovska was named Tuesday as considered one of 4 recipients of the distinguished Fields Medal, which is commonly described because the Nobel Prize in arithmetic.

The International Mathematical Union mentioned Viazovska, who holds the chair in quantity principle on the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, was being honored for her work on the densest packing of an identical spheres in eight dimensions.

Viazovska mentioned Russia’s assault on Ukraine in February had profoundly modified her life and people of all Ukrainians.

“When the war started I could not think about anything else, including mathematics,” she mentioned, including that educating has provided some respite, nevertheless.

“When I’m in front of class, I have to forget about everything else because I have to be very focused,” mentioned Viazovska. “This made me forget about the fear and pain inside myself.” The different winners had been French mathematician Hugo Duminil-Copin of the University of Geneva; Korean-American mathematician June Huh of Princeton; and British mathematician James Maynard of the University of Oxford.

The Fields Medal is awarded each 4 years to mathematicians underneath age 40. The recipients are usually introduced on the International Congress of Mathematicians, which was initially attributable to be held in Russia this yr however moved to Helsinki as a substitute.

“The ongoing barbaric battle that Russia nonetheless continues to wage in opposition to Ukraine clearly exhibits that no different various was possible,“ the president of the International Mathematical Union, Carlos E. Kenig, mentioned.

Viazovska just lately devoted considered one of her lectures to Yulia Zdanovksa, a younger Ukrainian mathematician and laptop scientist from Kharkiv. who was killed in a Russian missile assault.

“When someone like her dies, it’s like the future dies,“ Viazovska said. “Right now, Ukrainians are giving the highest price for our beliefs and for our freedom.”