ⓒYONHAP News

A Korean American mathematician who has been serving as a distinguished professor at the Korea Institute for Advanced Study(KIAS) has won the Fields Medal, becoming the first person of Korean descent to win the prestigious award. 

The International Mathematical Union(IMU) named Princeton University professor June Huh one of the four Fields Medal recipients on Tuesday. The awards ceremony was held at Aalto University in Helsinki later in the day. 

Established in 1936, the Fields Medal is bestowed on scholars under 40 for their notable contributions to the field of mathematics. Along with the Abel Prize, it is often referred to as mathematics’ equivalent to the Nobel Prize.

The IMU noted Huh’s achievements in Hodge theory, the proof of the Dowling-Wilson conjecture for geometric lattices, the proof of the Heron-Rota-Welsh conjecture for matroids, the development of the theory of Lorentzian polynomials and the proof of the strong Mason conjecture.

The 39-year-old scholar was born in the U.S. in 1983 to Korean scholar parents, but returned to South Korea at the age of two. He earned a bachelor's degree in physics and astronomy at Seoul National University and a master's degree in mathematics at the same college. He received his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Michigan in 2014. 

Huh has been affiliated with KIAS for years, first as a scholar between 2015 and 2021 and then as a professor since 2021. He became a distinguished professor at the institute this year.