IHES researchers honored in Beijing

Several mathematicians affiliated to IHES are among the researchers who were distinguished with the Frontiers of Science Award during the International Congress of Basic Science whose inaugural edition took place in Beijing on July 16-28.

The award celebrates both basic and applied research results, published during the past five years in the fields of mathematics, theoretical physics and computer science. They must be of highest scientific value and originality and must have made an important impact in one of the three areas of interest. They must also have been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Among the 134 publications selected overall, two were co-authored by Hugo Duminil-Copin, permanent professor at IHES, professor at the University of Geneva and laureate of the 2022 Fields Medal:

• Sharp phase transition for the random-cluster and Potts models via decision trees, published in the Annals of Mathematics in 2019. This paper was co-written by Hugo Duminil-Copin, Vincent Tassion (ETH Zürich), and Aran Raoufi, who spent three years at IHES between 2016 and 2018 as a PhD student, under the supervision of Prof. Duminil-Copin.
• Marginal triviality of the scaling limits of critical 4D Ising and $\phi_4^4$ models, published in the Annals of Mathematics in 2021and co-authored by Michael Aizenman (Princeton) and Hugo Duminil-Copin.

Three of the research articles selected for the award were co-authored by Maxim Kontsevich, permanent professor at the Institute:

• Canonical bases for cluster algebras, published in the Journal of the American Mathematical Society in 2018, and co-written by Mark Gross (University of Cambridge), Paul Hacking (University of Massachusetts Amherst), Sean Keel (University of Texas), and Maxim Kontsevich.
• Specialization of birational types, published in Inventiones mathematicae in 2019, and co-authored by Maxim Kontsevich and Yuri Tschinkel (New York University).
• Wick rotation and the positivity of energy in quantum field theory, published in the Quarterly Journal of Mathematics in 2021 and written by Maxim Kontsevich and Graeme Segal (University of Oxford).

The list of publications that were celebrated during the International Congress for Basic Science also includes ‘On the implosion of a compressible fluid II: Singularity formation’, published in the Annals of Mathematics in 2022. This is one of three much celebrated papers co-written by Frank Merle, CY Cergy Paris Université-IHES Chair in Analysis, Pierre Raphaël, holder of the Schlumberger Chair for mathematical sciences at IHES and Professor at the University of Cambridge, Igor Rodnianski, Professor at Princeton University, and Jérémie Szeftel, CNRS Research Director at Sorbonne Université. In addition to the Frontiers of Science Award, their most recent contributions have already earned them the 2023 Bôcher Prize of the American Mathematical Society and the 2023 Clay Research Award, of the Clay Mathematics Institute.

Sébastien Boucksom, editor in chief of the Publications mathématiques de l’IHES, and a CNRS Research Director at Institut de Mathématiques de Jussieu – Paris Rive Gauche, is also among the researchers who were distinguished in Beijing for his paper entitled ‘A variational approach to the Yau-Tian-Donaldson conjecture’, published in the Journal of the American Mathematical Society in 2021 and co-written with Robert J. Berman (University of Gothenburg) and Mattias Jonsson (University of Michigan).

IHES is very proud of the important scientific contributions achieved by the IHES researchers honored with the Frontiers of Science Award and extends its sincere congratulations to all of them!