The Fields medal is given to mathematicians who have studied the most efficient way to pack spheres in eight-dimensional space.

Mathematics 5 July 2022
The four Fields medal winners, clockwise from top left: Maryna Viazovska, James Maynard, Hugo Duminil-Copin and June Huh

The four Fields medal winners are clockwise from the top.

Ryan Cowan and Lance Murphy are related.

The Fields medal is given to mathematicians who have studied the most efficient way to pack spheres in eight-dimensional space.

James Maynard is at the University of Oxford, Maryna Viazovska is at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Hugo Duminil-Copin is at the University ofGeneva, and June Huh is at the University of New Jersey.

Viazovska is the second woman to receive the award.

The geometric problem of sphere packing is very easy to solve. You have a big box and you want to put as many balls into it as possible. She provided an explicit formula to prove the most efficient stacking pattern for spheres in eight dimensions.

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Maynard and Duminil-Copin both contributed to the theory of phase transitions in statistical physics.

June Huh, who dropped out of high school at the age of 16 to become a poet, was recognised for her innovative use of geometry and mathematics.

The medal is given to mathematicians under the age of 40 every four years.

The John Charles Fields Awards were first given out in 1936. The awards were supposed to be presented at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Saint Petersburg, Russia, but the event was moved to a different location.

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