Maryna Vyazovska is the second woman in history to win the Fields Medal.
Ukrainian Maryna Vyazovska won the Fields medal – the most prestigious award in the field of mathematics. As Nauka.ua reports, the prize was awarded for solving the problem of packing spheres in an eight-dimensional space.
Vyazovska proved that the Е₈ lattice is the densest way of packing identical spheres in eight dimensions, and also contributed solutions to related problems and interpolation problems in Fourier analysis. The award was presented at the International Mathematical Congress in Helsinki.
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Finding the densest packing of identical balls in a given space is an ancient mathematical problem. But until 2016, the solution was known only for two- and three-dimensional space. Vyazovska was able to prove that the E₈ lattice is the densest packing for eight-dimensional space.
Later, together with Henry Kohn, Abinav Kumar, Steven Miller, Danylo Radchenko, Vyazovska found a solution for 24-dimensional space as well.< /p>
The mathematician became the second representative of Ukraine after Volodymyr Drinfeld and the second woman in the history of the award after the Iranian mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani. For Vyazumska, the Fields Medal is already the ninth international award for her work.
In addition, this year Hugo Duminil-Copen was also awarded for “solving the old problems of the probability theory of phase transitions in statistical physics, especially in dimensions three and four”, Jun Ha for “the transfer of the ideas of Gauge's theory to combinatorics, the proof of the Dowling-Wilson conjecture for geometric lattices, the proof of the Heron-Roth-Welsh conjecture for matroids, the development of the theory of Lorentz polynomials and the proof of the Mason conjecture”, James Maynard for “contributions to the analytic theory of numbers, which led to the structure of prime numbers and in the Diophantine approximation.”
The Fields Medal is awarded once every four years to mathematicians at the age of 40 for outstanding achievements in science.
Read more about Vyazovska's work and its significance in the article by Iryna Yehorchenko How to pack bullets. The work of the Ukrainian mathematician became a world sensation” on ZN.UA.
