On November 20th, the American Mathematical Society announced that the 2019 Oswald Veblen Prize in Geometry has been awarded to Chen Xiuxiong, along with Simon Donaldson and Sun Song, for their three-part series entitled Kähler-Einstein metrics on Fano manifolds, I, II and III”, published in 2015 in the Journal of the American Mathematical Society. Chen Xiuxiong is a Distinguished Adjunct Professor and the Founding Director of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences at ShanghaiTech University.
The award recognizes the trio’s breathtaking proof of a long-standing conjecture in differential geometry. One of the nominators wrote on the importance of the work: “This is perhaps the biggest breakthrough in differential geometry since Perelman's work on the Poincaré conjecture. It is certainly the biggest result in Kähler geometry since Yau's solution of the Calabi conjecture 35 years earlier. It is already having a huge impact that will only grow with time.”
Given every three years, the Veblen Prize is the highest honor given for work in geometry or topology. Previous recipients include Fields Medalist Stephen Smale, William Thurston, Shing-Tung Yau, Michael Freedman; and Able Prize Laureate Mikhael Gromov. Famed mathematician, hedge fund manager, and philanthropist James Simons was also a winner.
Read more: http://www.ams.org/news?news_id=4705
Photo courtesy of SUNY Stonybrook website