Hong Wang, Recipient of the 2025 Salem Prize

IHES is proud to announce that Hong Wang, Permanent Professor at IHES and also Professor at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at NYU, has been awarded the 2025 Salem Prize. This prestigious distinction recognizes her contributions to harmonic analysis and geometric measure theory, highlighting the significant impact of her work on the international mathematical community.

Born in 1991 in Guangxi, China, Hong Wang displayed exceptional talent in mathematics from an early age. After earning her Bachelor’s degree from Peking University in 2011, she continued her studies in France at École Polytechnique and Université Paris-Saclay, before completing her PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the supervision of Larry Guth in 2019. She then pursued postdoctoral research at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, one of the world’s most prestigious centers dedicated entirely to fundamental research. Hong Wang subsequently joined UCLA, as an assistant professor (2021–2023) before taking up her position at NYU’s Courant Institute in 2023. In 2025, she became a Permanent Professor at IHES, cementing her international scientific influence.

Hong Wang is particularly renowned for her resolution of the Kakeya conjecture, a central problem in harmonic analysis and geometry. This long-studied problem concerns the minimal dimension of sets containing line segments in all directions. Her solution paves the way for new research on several related conjectures and is considered a major breakthrough.

In the IHES Bois-Marie newsletter, Terence Tao reflects on the significance of this conjecture and the impact of its resolution: “The Kakeya conjecture was the first major obstacle to solving many other problems in these fields. Now that it has been resolved, numerous other fascinating questions arise, including the restriction conjecture, the Bochner-Riesz conjecture, and the arithmetic Kakeya conjecture. It is an exciting time for this field of research!”

For further reading, Université Paris-Saclay has published an article titled “The Kakeya Problem: How to Move a Needle in the minimum of space?”, which explains the problem in an accessible way and highlights the significance of Hong Wang’s solution in the broader context of mathematical research.

© Photo Credit : Christophe PEUS