Before the Fields Medal came the Ambrosetti Medal. Hong Wang and Yu Deng, who have just been awarded the Fields Medal—the world’s most prestigious distinction for mathematicians under the age of 40—had already been honoured at SISSA in the fall 2025 with the medal named after Antonio Ambrosetti, which is awarded to outstanding emerging researchers in the field of Nonlinear Analysis. The recipients of the Fields Medals were announced during the opening ceremony of the International Congress of Mathematicians, ICM 2026, in Philadelphia.
Established by SISSA, with the support of Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei and the Italian Mathematical Union, and made possible by the financial support of the Pietro Pittini Foundation, the Ambrosetti Medal honours the memory of a pivotal figure in the Italian school of mathematical analysis.
One of SISSA’s earliest professors, Antonio Ambrosetti made pioneering contributions to critical point theory, variational and topological methods, as well as bifurcation theory, with fundamental applications to differential equations, Hamiltonian systems and geometry. Together with Giovanni Prodi, he is regarded as one of the founding fathers of the Italian school of nonlinear analysis.
In its 2025 edition, the Ambrosetti Medal was awarded to Yu Deng, Riccardo Montalto and Hong Wang during the conference “New Frontiers in Nonlinear Analysis and Differential Equations”, held in Trieste in November last year. Deng and Wang’s subsequent recognition with the Fields Medal further confirms the remarkable ability of the italian award to identify and promote research destined to redefine the frontiers of contemporary mathematics.
Clockwise: Hong Wang, Yu Deng, SISSA Director Andrea Romanino and Fondazione Pietro Pittini President Marina Pittini
Hong Wang, of New York University and IHES, received the Ambrosetti Medal for her outstanding achievements in harmonic analysis and their implications across several areas of mathematics. Her research has introduced radically new ideas into the study of wave packets, with profound consequences for number theory, geometric measure theory and PDEs. Among her most notable contributions is her work on the celebrated three-dimensional Kakeya problem: an apparently simple question concerning the smallest possible dimension of a set containing a unit line segment in every direction in space.
Yu Deng, of the University of Chicago, received the award for major contributions to the theory of nonlinear evolution equations. These include fundamental results connected with Hilbert’s sixth problem. In this context, he provided a rigorous mathematical justification for the passage from the Newtonian dynamics of atoms to the equations of fluid dynamics through Boltzmann’s kinetic theory, as well as for the analogous derivation of the wave kinetic equation from the Schrödinger equation. His work combines ideas from partial differential equations, probabilistic techniques and combinatorial methods with exceptional effectiveness.
Only a few months after the award ceremony in Trieste, the Fields Medal has placed the research of Hong Wang and Yu Deng at the very highest level of international recognition. For SISSA and the Ambrosetti Medal, this achievement provides remarkable confirmation of their mission to recognise, at an early stage, novel ideas, methods and visions that will shape the future of mathematics.
“We are deeply proud of this exceptional achievement,” said Professor Massimiliano Berti of SISSA, a member of the Antonio Ambrosetti Medal Committee and himself an Invited Speaker at ICM 2026 in the section on partial differential equations. “This accomplishment once again demonstrates the outstanding international level that the award has already achieved. We believe that this is the best way to honour the memory of Antonio Ambrosetti, who was a great mentor to all of us and a central figure in establishing SISSA’s excellence in research.”
Marina Pittini, President of the Pietro Pittini Foundation, added: “For us, supporting the Ambrosetti Medal means promoting scientific excellence while investing in the future. Our collaboration with SISSA stems from a shared commitment to fostering the wider dissemination of scientific culture and making it attractive to younger generations. This is how, by working together, we can inspire young people to believe in research and in their own potential.”
Banner Image: Fields Medal 2026 Winners, Left to Right: Yu Deng, John Parson, Jacob Tsimerman, Hong Wang. Credits: Xinhua