Hong Wang Wins 2026 Fields Medal, the Third Woman Ever
Living in the Math World Means Threading the Needle
Hong Wang, a mathematician at NYU and IHES, has won the 2026 Fields Medal for her proof of the three-dimensional Kakeya conjecture, a landmark result in harmonic analysis and geometric measure theory. The 35-year-old is only the third woman to receive the award in its 90-year history. Her work, done with Joshua Zahl, shows that thin tubes pointing in every direction in 3D space cannot overlap too much, resolving a decades-old problem.
No one can come and say, 'Oh, actually, this is not true.'