Meet winners of the most prestigious maths award

These bright sparks have received the Fields Medal, given to mathematicians under the age of 40, at the International Congress of Mathematicians.

Manjul Bhargava



The Canadian-American's research is mainly focused on number theory and algebra. Bhargava has studied the work of one of mathematics' great practitioners, Carl Friederich Gauss, and developed a powerful tool for analysing polynomials.

Martin Hairer



Hairer, an Austrian, researches stochastic partial differential equations. Differential equations show up throughout mathematics, physics, and engineering. They describe processes that change over time, like the movement of a cannon shell shot.

Maryam Mirzakhani



Iranian-born Mirzakhani's work is about the geometry of Riemann surfaces. One of the major research areas in the study of these surfaces is how one Riemann surface can be deformed or smushed into another surface. Mirzakhani has contributed to this subject.

Artur Avila



The Brazilian's contributions has been in clarifying that a certain broad class of dynamical systems are one of two types: They either evolve into a stable state, or fall into a chaotic stochastic state, in which their behaviour can be described through probability.