Hong Wang and June Huh: Do you need an IMO medal to win a Fields Medal?
Hong Wang is the winner of this year's Fields Medal for her contributions to Fourier restriction, Falconer's conjecture, Furstenberg sets in the plane, and the Kakeya conjecture. She is the third woman and the first Chinese woman to win the award.
She was born in Beijing, China, and received her undergraduate degree from Peking University. In an environment where IMO medals are everywhere and the density of math gods is off the charts, Wang Hong's position was almost destined to be awkward: she wasn't a competition kid; she was a transfer student from the Earth and Space Science department who got into math via the gaokao. Facing a crowd of exam prodigies with sky-high GPAs, feeling discouraged was almost structural. Her own words in the interview confirm this—during undergrad, she once doubted whether she was really cut out for math.
One more detail: before heading to the US for her PhD, she went to France first, and at the time, the person who wrote her recommendation letter for studying in France was a department director from her freshman year in Earth and Space Science. Does this indirectly suggest that her studies in the latter half of math department weren't going so well, to the point where she couldn't find enough teachers willing to vouch for her? It was only later, reading more recollections from her classmates, that I learned her undergrad GPA really wasn't that high.
Peking University peers recall her: not a competition student, grades not particularly standout, on the quieter and more introverted side in class, doesn't talk much, but incredibly self-disciplined and willing to put in the hard work.
From her French colleagues, the descriptors are: lively, outgoing, full of ideas.
Her professor at École Polytechnique evaluated her: rare intuition, far surpassing all students in her year, able to quickly crack problems way beyond the syllabus; the kind of extremely rare student whose talent, resilience, and depth of thinking are all maxed out.
Her PhD advisor at MIT evaluated her: a research temperament that's "slow and deep," unbound by traditional paths, able to find breakthroughs others missed using new methods.
The same person, separated by a Pacific Ocean, described as two different creatures.
Congrats, Hong Wang! Grit and passion win at the end of the day!
June, Wang, you are both equally inspiring to me. You don't need permission, or to be an IMO competition kid to achieve greatness