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At the age of 18, he won the gold medal in the International Olympic Mathematics Competition with full score. During his undergraduate study at Peking University, he scored 100 points in 19 courses and 99 points in 7 courses. At the age of 35, he became a tenured professor of MIT...
Recently, the “great god” of mathematics, Yun Zhiwei, won the Simmons Scholar Award again, becoming the fourth Chinese mathematician to receive this honor.
Yun Zhiwei is a representative figure of the "golden generation" of Mathematics at Peking University. In addition to him, there are also mathematicians such as Xu Chenyang, Zhang Wei, Zhu Xinwen, Yuan Xinyi, Liu Ruochuan and Xiao Liang.
They all entered the School of Mathematical Sciences of Peking University around 2000, and most of them became professors or researchers at MIT, Peking University, California Institute of Technology, University of California, Berkeley and other top universities in the world around the age of 36.
In recent years, they have successively won many international awards, and the "golden generation" of Mathematics at Peking University shines.
Won 4 global awards at the age of 38
According to the official website of the Simmons Foundation, Yun Zhiwei won the 2020 Simons Investigators Award in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the intersection of representation theory, algebraic geometry, and number theory.
The Simmons Foundation was founded by James Simmons and his wife, a famous mathematician, philanthropist, and the title of "First Hedge Fund Person", to fund scholars in the fields of education, health, and natural sciences. Since 2012, the Foundation has selected 3 to 4 outstanding mathematicians to become Simmons Scholars every year.
Each Simmons scholar will receive a five-year research fund totaling US$500,000, which can be extended for another five years based on the winner’s research influence. The winners can freely spend their funds to carry out long-term original work and solve fundamental problems in mathematics.
A total of 15 Simmons scholars were selected this year, and Yun Zhiwei became one of the 4 winners in the field of mathematics and the only Chinese winner.
Yun Zhiwei was born in Changzhou, Jiangsu in November 1982. He entered Peking University School of Mathematics in 2000 and went to Princeton University to study after graduation. He received his Ph.D. in 2009 and has been a professor of MIT's Department of Mathematics in 2018.
Mainly engaged in the study of representation theory, number theory and algebraic geometry, especially the Langlands Program. He used geometrical ideas and techniques to solve problems in group representation and number theory, constructed the first examples of E7 and E8 types of motivation, and solved the related inverse Galois problem.
During his studies at Peking University, Yun Zhiwei scored 100 points in 19 courses and 99 points in 7 courses. He is "Yun Shen" in the eyes of his classmates; he reads theory books and feels like reading novels, and studies more than 10 hours of mathematics every day. Without feeling tired.
In 2012, Yun Zhiwei won the SASTRA Ramanu Gold Award for his fundamental contributions in representation theory, algebraic geometry and number theory.
The award is only given to young mathematicians under 32 years old. In 2006, well-known Chinese mathematician Tao Zhexuan also won this award.
In 2017, Yun Zhiwei, who was a professor at Yale University at the time, won the Scientific Breakthrough Award, known as the "Oscar of Science".
In 2018, he became the invited speaker of the International Congress of Mathematicians, the largest and highest level academic conference in the international mathematics community.
Together with the Simmons Scholar Award this year, the 38-year-old Yun Zhiwei has won 4 global awards.
The "Golden Generation" of Mathematics at Peking University
Including Yun Zhiwei, Peking University mathematics "golden generation" halo shines.
Liu Ruochuan and Xu Chenyang enrolled in 1999, Li Chi, Yuan Xinyi, Yun Zhiwei, Zhang Wei, Zhu Xinwen enrolled in 2000, Lu Jianfeng, Ma Zongming, Xiao Liang enrolled in 2001, Wang Botong enrolled in 2002, and Liu enrolled in 2003. Yifeng and so on.
In recent years, they have successively won scientific breakthrough awards-New Horizons Award in Mathematics, Ramanu Gold Award, Sloan Research Award, American Mathematical Society Centennial Award, Qiushi Outstanding Young Scholar Award, Cray Research Award, Future Science Award, etc. Heavyweight awards.
Liu Ruochuan, Yun Zhiwei, Yuan Xinyi, Song Shichang, Xiao Liang, Xu Chenyang (from left)
The following is a brief introduction to the three talented mathematicians in the same class as Yun Zhiwei.
★ Yuan Xinyi
Winner of the 2000 International Mathematical Olympiad Gold Medal, the first Chinese to win the Clay Institute Research Award in the United States. He is currently an associate professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley.
★ Zhu Xinwen
After graduating from undergraduate in 2004, he went to the University of California, Berkeley to study for a doctorate degree. He taught at Harvard University from 2009 to 2012, and was an assistant professor at Northwestern University from 2012 to 2014. In 2014, he served as an associate professor in the Department of Mathematics at California Institute of Technology and was promoted to professor in 2016.
Won the 2013-2014 American Mathematical Society Centennial Scholarship, and the 2020 Science Breakthrough Award-New Horizons in Mathematics Award.
★ Zhang Wei
In 2000, he was recommended to Peking University School of Mathematics. In 2004, he entered Columbia University to study. From 2009 to 2011, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer at Harvard University. From 2011 to 2017, he served successively as Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, and Professor at Columbia University. Since 2017, he has been a professor at MIT. Mainly engaged in the research of number theory, automorphic forms and arithmetic geometry.
Continuing the friendship for more than ten years, strong alliance
It is worth mentioning that these "golden generation" mathematicians still continue their old friendship on the road of scientific research.
In 2017, Yun Zhiwei and Zhang Wei collaborated and found that the high-order Gan-Gross-Prasad conjecture in the function domain was proved. This is related to 3 of the 7 "Millennium Problems" (Hodge Conjecture, Riemann Hypothesis, BSD Conjecture). Together they won the Scientific Breakthrough Award—New Horizons Award in Mathematics.
In 2015, Yun Zhiwei and Zhu Xinwen, who studied algebraic geometry, and Yuan Xinyi and Zhang Wei, who focused on number theory, combined these two general directions into a unique perspective to conquer the Langlands project.
This project was proposed by Robert Langlands in the 1960s, trying to establish the internal connection between number theory and geometry, and use tools and methods in one field to study problems in another field.
In the future, expect them to collide with more new sparks!
Reference materials:
1.https://www.simonsfoundation.org/grant/simons-investigators/
2.https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/3nZJtiNgUQYjtL_SRi1-jw
3.http://news.pku.edu.cn
4.https://math.berkeley.edu/~yxy/
5.https://news.pku.edu.cn/xwzh/5dbdc108b30f40b2ba96fdffddaa9031.htm
6.https://math.mit.edu/directory/profile.php?pid=1998
7.https://math.mit.edu/directory/profile.php?pid=1201
8.http://pkunews.pku.edu.cn/xwzh/2015-12/12/content_292059.htm
9.https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/OWUa9Wkvb67nWFCF1R8rgw
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Source: Science Net WeChat Official Account