An EPFL mathematician is awarded a Fields Medal

© EPFL 2022 / Fred Merz (Lundi13) Maryna Viazovska has received a Fields Medal, a prestigious honor often described as the Nobel Prize of Mathematics, for her work on the sphere-packing problem in 8 and 24 dimensions. Previously, the problem had been solved for only three dimensions or fewer. Another Fields Medal is awarded to University of Geneva mathematician Hugo Duminil-Copin. Maryna Viazovska, who holds the Chair of Number Theory at EPFL, has been awarded a Fields Medal, widely considered to be the highest accolade in her discipline and described as the Nobel Prize of Mathematics (a field in which the Nobel Foundation does not sponsor an official award). At 37 years of age, Viazovska has thus become only the second female Fields Medalist - after Maryam Mirzakhani in 2014 - and joins a list of over 60 mathematicians to have received the prestigious honor to date. The Fields Medal was created in 1936 and is awarded every four years to one or more mathematicians under the age of 40. The official conferral is to take place at the International Congress of Mathematicians, which opens today in Helsinki.