Recognition to the 38-year-old for her work on the “problem of packing spheres”. She is the second woman to win the award since 1936
“I’m sorry to be only the second and I hope to be the first of a long series,” he told al New York Times just received the news. Maryna ViazovskaUkrainian from Kiev, professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, is the winner of one of the four Field medals, the world’s highest recognition for mathematics, analogous to the Nobel. Viazovska is known for testing higher dimensional equivalents of stacking spheres of equal size.
Of the 60 mathematicians who have won Fields Medals before this year, 59 are men. The only exception, until yesterday, was a Stanford mathematician, Maryam Mirzakhani, awarded in 2014. Viazovska’s work is based on Johannes Kepler’s theories dating back more than 400 years. The 38-year-old Ukrainian mathematician was awarded in particular for her important works related to the so-called “Problem of packing spheres”that is, the mathematical demonstration of what may appear to be a trivial enigma of everyday life that we face when we try to put a series of round objects inside a box.
– Today’s war news
Responding to the controversy of those who accused her of having received the medal only because she was Ukrainian, Viazovska recalled not living in his country of origin for a long time. However, the war certainly upset his life as well. Her parents still live near Kiev and for them the situation “is very difficult” as she explained herself. Unlike in other years, the Fields Medals were not awarded during the International Congress of Mathematics which opens tomorrow and which will be held online instead of in St. Petersburg. Helsinki, Finland was chosen as the venue for the award ceremony.
July 5, 2022 (change July 5, 2022 | 15:46)
© Time.News