BreakingFields Medal win: Wang Hong, Deng Yu are first Chinese nationals to score top maths honour

Two former Peking University classmates now stand together on the world’s highest stage for mathematicians

For the first time, China has produced Fields Medal winners educated on its own soil – and two at once.

Chinese mathematicians Wang Hong and Deng Yu took the honour, alongside John Pardon and Jacob Tsimerman.

It is also the first time that two mathematicians who completed their undergraduate training in mainland China have shared the prize in the same year.

With this, China becomes the fifth country – after the United States, France, Britain and Russia – to produce two Fields laureates in a single ceremony, and the first Asian nation to do so.