Professor Vladimir Drinfeld and Professor Yau Shing-tung are answering audience’s questions in the Shaw Prize Lecture held at Lecture Theatre, Shaw College
Into the splendour of mathematics
2023 marks a significant milestone as the Shaw Prize celebrates its 20th anniversary. The Prize has been awarded to a total of 31 Mathematical Sciences Laureates from 2004 to 2023. On 13 November, Professor Vladimir Drinfeld and Professor Yau Shing-tung gave awe-inspiring talks as the Shaw laureates in Mathematical Sciences 2023 to packed audience at Shaw College.
The Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences 2023 is awarded in equal shares to Professor Drinfeld and Professor Yau for their contributions related to mathematical physics, arithmetic geometry, differential geometry and Kähler geometry.
Professor Drinfeld is Harry Prett Distinguished Service Professor from the University of Chicago’s Department of Mathematics. His work is a pillar of arithmetic geometry. He has invented the shtukas (from Stück in German, meaning “piece”) and proved the arithmetic Langlands conjecture over a function field in rank two, for which he was awarded the Fields Medal in 1990.
Professor Yau graduated in mathematics from Chung Chi College of CUHK in 1969. He is currently Distinguished Visiting Professor-at-Large and Director of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMS) at CUHK, as well as Director of Yau Mathematical Sciences Center at Tsinghua University. His work on the fusion of geometry and analysis, now known as geometric analysis, has had a deep and lasting impact on both mathematics and theoretical physics.
He believes that mathematics isn’t an abstract discipline disconnected from everyday phenomena, it is crucial to our understanding of the physical world instead. His interactions with general relativists made him open to collaborating with physicists in the development of string theory. “I stumbled on the beauty of maths. I felt it must be relevant to physics and our understanding of the nature.”
Professor Yau developed systematically partial differential equation methods in differential geometry. With these, he solved the Calabi conjecture, the existence of Hermitian Yang–Mills connections, and the positive mass conjecture for which they used the theory of minimal surfaces. He introduced geometric methods to important problems in general relativity. He has also collaborated with astronomy, physics and philosophy experts at Harvard University to establish the “Black Hole Initiative”, the world’s first interdisciplinary centre exploring black holes.
Professor Rocky S. Tuan, CUHK Vice-Chancellor and Vice-President, congratulated him. “The Shaw Prize is among the highest academic honours awarded in the country. On behalf of our staff and students, I’d like to send our heartfelt congratulations to Professor Yau and thank him for his dedication to nurturing maths talent over the years.” Professor Yau said: “The Shaw Prize is meaningful to me as I’m among the many prominent scholars being recognised. In addition, the Prize has stirred up my memories with the late Sir Run Run Shaw and the late Fong Yat-wah in the past.”
In the question-and-answer session moderated by Professor Chan Kwok-wai of CUHK’s Department of Mathematics, the speakers answered questions including the nature of mathematics, and the relationship between mathematics and artificial intelligence (AI). Professor Yau said, “The algorithms of AI are part of maths. AI requires rigorous calculations to demonstrate what is true.”
After three years of virtual celebration, Shaw Laureates from the current year and the past three years received their awards at the Award Presentation Ceremony on 12 November at the Grand Hall of the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. Founded in 2002 under the auspices of the late Sir Run Run Shaw Prize to honour individuals who have achieved distinguished and significant advances in the fields of astronomy, life science and medicine, and mathematical sciences. Each category carries a monetary award of US$1.2 million.
To support the establishment of a Postdoctoral Fellowship at IMS of the University, Professor Yau has pledged to donate the monetary award of his Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences. The Postdoctoral Fellowship will be named after Professor Yau’s mother, the late Madam Leung Yeuk Lam, as . This visionary gift will go a long way towards talent cultivation and retention and strengthening the advanced academic research in mathematical sciences at CUHK.
