Congratulations to Hugo Duminil-Copin for Winning the Fields Medal

French mathematician Hugo Duminil-Copin, Professor at the University of Geneva and the Institute for Advanced Study (IHÉS), was awarded the 2022 Fields Medal, one of the highest honors in mathematics, alongside three others. In June, Professor Duminil-Copin gave a brilliant talk at the Math Special Seminar hosted by the NYU-ECNU Institute of Mathematical Sciences at NYU Shanghai.

Duminil-Copin is awarded the Fields Medal 2022 for “solving long-standing problems in the probabilistic theory of phase transitions in statistical physics, especially in dimensions three and four,” according to the award committee.

In June, Duminil-Copin gave his lecture at the NYU-ECNU Institute of Mathematical Sciences at NYU Shanghai on the topic of Emergent Symmetries in 2D Percolation. “Hugo was identified very early in his career as an astounding problem-solver, and several of us in mathematics at NYU Shanghai had been closely following his work for years. Our colleague Vladas Sidoravicius, who prematurely passed away in May 2019, had collaborated with him and Michael Aizenman on an important paper showing the continuity of Ising's model spontaneous magnetization in dimension 3, using an extension of the so-called random current representation of that model. In the Fall 2019, we organized a working group mainly based on one of his courses and his results on the Ising and Potts model. We were delighted that he accepted to give a lecture in our seminar in June this year. It is wonderful to learn that he is awarded the Fields medal, which he undoubtedly deserves”, said Institute Co-Director and NYU Shanghai Professor of Mathematics Pierre Tarrès.

Specializing in probability theory, Duminil-Copin studied at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, then the University Paris-Sud and the École normale supérieure (Paris). In 2008, he moved to the University of Geneva to write a PhD thesis under Stanislav Smirnov, Fields Medal recipient in 2010. In 2013, after his postdoctorate, he was appointed assistant professor, then professor, at the University of Geneva. In 2016, he became a permanent professor at the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques.

The Fields Medal is a prize awarded to no more than four mathematicians under 40 years of age at the International Congress of the International Mathematical Union (IMU), a meeting that takes place every four years. It is regarded as one of the highest honors a mathematician can receive, and has been described as the Nobel Prize of Mathematics.