Subj : These 4 problem-solvers just won one of maths biggest prizes To : All From : PopularScience-Physics Date : Sat Sep 23 2023 00:45:48 These 4 problem-solvers just won one of maths biggest prizes Date: Tue, 05 Jul 2022 16:43:18 +0000 Description: Ukraine's Maryna Viazovska presents her medal after receiving the 2022 Fields Prize for Mathematics in Helsinki. Vesa Moilanen/Lehtikuva/AFP via Getty Images The Fields Medal is kind of like an Olympic gold in mathematics. The post These 4 problem-solvers just won one of maths biggest prizes appeared first on Popular Science . FULL STORY ====================================================================== Ukraine's Maryna Viazovska presents her medal after receiving the 2022 Fields Prize for Mathematics in Helsinki. Vesa Moilanen/Lehtikuva/AFP via Getty Images Four mathematicians won the prestigious Fields Medal on Monday for their significant contributions to mathematics. The 14-karat gold award, equivalent to an Olympic gold medal for math, is given out by the International Mathematical Union in Helsinki every four years to talented mathematicians under the age of 40. This years award recognizes groundbreaking research in subjects such as prime numbers and the packing, or efficiently arranging, of spheres in eight-dimensional space. The winning mathematiciansHugo Duminil-Copin of France, June Huh of the US, Maryna Viazovska of Switzerland, and James Maynard of the UKhave answered questions that have stumped other experts for years. Duminil-Copin, of Frances Institut des Hautes tudes Scientifiques, was awarded for his work on the probabilistic theory of phase transitionshow matter changes forms, such as water freezing to ice. Duminil-Copins work focuses on how ferromagnetic objects transition from a nonmagnetic to magnetic phase in whats called the Ising model. Previous physicists have used it to create simplified one- and two-dimensional models of reality, but solving the Ising model in 3D is more difficult. The ability to produce exact formulas just collapses completely, Duminil-Copin told The New York Times . Nobody has any idea how to compute things exactly. While the 3D Ising model is not completely solved, Duminil-Copins work showed proof that phase transitions in a 3D Ising model resembled those in two dimensions. [Related: Your brain uses different neurons to add and subtract ] Princeton Universitys Huh won for a range of work: He was the first to apply geometric concepts to combinatorics, the mathematics of counting. Working with his colleagues, he answered previously unsolved problems in combinatorics and provided a scheme to explain the mathematical properties of complex geometric objects. But despite these accomplishments, Huh tried to avoid math as much as he could growing up. I was pretty good at most subjects except math, Huh told The New York Times , adding he nearly failed his tests. Huh, who dropped out of school and wanted to become a poet, fell in love with math at 23 after studying under Heisuke Hironaka, a Japanese mathematician, who won the Fields Medal in 1970. For 13 years, Viazovska, a Ukrainian-born mathematician and professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, has worked on an arrangement called the E 8 lattice, which shows how to pack spheres in eight dimensions in the least amount of space possible. Sphere packing is a very natural geometric problem. You have a big box, and you have infinite collection of equal balls, and youre trying to put as many balls into the box as you can, Viazovska, who is now trying to densely pack spheres in 24 dimensions, told New Scientist . Her win is the second time the committee has awarded the medal to a woman. One mathematical theory is that there are an infinite number of prime numbers, but as numbers get larger the distance between two prime numbers gets farther apart. The University of Oxfords James Maynard, in a prize-winning breakthrough, showed this is not always the case: There are instances where prime numbers can come close together. Yet, in other stretches, primes can be very distant. John Charles Fields, a Canadian mathematician, created the award in 1924, as a way to recognize early-career mathematicians for their accomplishmentsand also to highlight researchers whose future work might dazzle, too. Suddenly to be tossed up on this list, Maynard told Quanta Magazine , with these legends of mathematics who inspired me as [a child], is incredible but completely surreal. The post These 4 problem-solvers just won one of maths biggest prizes appeared first on Popular Science . Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made. ====================================================================== Link to news story: https://www.popsci.com/science/fields-medal-winners-mathematicians/ --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 (Linux/64) * Origin: tqwNet Science News (1337:1/100) .