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!

Hugo Duminil-Copin, mathematician, permanent professor at IHES and a 2022 Fields medalist, is the winner of the Grand Prix des Personnalités awarded by the weekly news magazine L’Express. The award was presented to him by Laura Chaubard, Director General of Ecole Polytechnique, at the first edition of the awards ceremony held on Wednesday, December 7 and chaired by Alain Weill, Chairman and CEO of L’Express.

The five prizes awarded on December 7 recognize personalities who have distinguished themselves in 2022 through their stance, influence or actions in the fields of ecological transition, tech, science, Europe and freedom.

Along with Hugo Duminil-Copin, laureate of the Grand Prix, the other laureates are Valérie Masson-Delmotte, Director of Research at the Climate and Environmental Sciences Laboratory at the French Atomic Energy Commission (Prize for ecological transition), Thomas Jonas, Managing Director and co-founder of Nature’s Fynd (Prize for tech), and the writers Andreï Kurkov (Prize for Europe) and Salman Rushdie (Prize for freedom).

Copyright © L. Bonaventure – F. Coffrini/AFP – V. Moilanen/Lehtikuva/AFP – MC Vergne/IHES – F. Scotti/UNIGE Faculty of Science

Press release – 5 July 2022

Hugo Duminil-Copin, a French mathematician specializing in probability theory, and a permanent professor at the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques (IHES) since 2016, has been awarded the Fields medal on the occasion of the International Congress of Mathematicians taking place in Helsinki. Considered as the most prestigious international award in mathematics, the Fields Medal crowns the exemplary scientific career and exceptional contributions to the advancement of mathematical sciences of Hugo Duminil-Copin, who is also ordinary professor in the mathematics section of the Faculty of Science at the University of Geneva.

This is the eighth Fields Medal (1) awarded to a professor at IHES (out of twelve permanent professors in mathematics since the creation of the Institute) and the eleventh Fields Medal (2) for Université Paris-Saclay, IHES being one of its founding members. This is also the sixteenth Fields medal awarded to a researcher whose institution is affiliated to CNRS (3).

Emmanuel Ullmo, Director of IHES, said: “We are delighted that the Fields Medal has been awarded to Hugo Duminil-Copin, a probabilist whose work has been so important that the scientific council of IHES unanimously chose him as a permanent professor very early in his career. This distinction also confirms the dynamism and excellence of the French mathematical community, as well as its recognition on a global scale.”Hugo Duminil-Copin said: “I am very honored to receive this prize, which I wish to share with the many collaborators with whom I’ve had the pleasure and the honor to work, as well as with all the members of my team. As a permanent professor at IHES, I have benefited from great freedom and independence in my research, while interacting with some of the most outstanding scientists in their field, in mathematics as well as in physics.”

Hugo Duminil-Copin, a mathematician with a remarkable track record

Born on August 26, 1985, Hugo Duminil-Copin joined the Ecole normale supérieure in Paris after two years of preparatory classes at lycée Louis-le-Grand. After receiving a master’s degree from Université Paris-Sud, now Université Paris-Saclay, he earned a PhD under the supervision of Stanislas Smirnov, himself a 2010 Fields medalist, at the University of Geneva, where he later became a post-doctoral researcher.

In 2013 he became Assistant Professor at the University of Geneva, and has been a professor there since 2014. In 2016, he joined IHES as a permanent professor. Since 2017, he has been the principal investigator of the European Research Council – Starting Grant “Critical behavior of lattice models (CriBLam)”, funded by Horizon 2020, the European Union’s research and innovation funding program. He is a member of the Laboratory Alexander Grothendieck, a CNRS joint research unit (CNRS / IHES).

Using probability theory to tackle problems in statistical physics

Hugo Duminil-Copin’s work focuses on the mathematical branch of statistical physics. He uses ideas from probability theory to study the critical behavior of various models on networks, such as the Ising model, the Potts model, the self-avoiding walk, and the percolation model. These mathematical objects describe a number of physical phenomena (such as magnetization, polymers, material porosity, etc.) by reframing them through random trajectories, sets or random graphs.

By using new connections between these models and by developing a theory of dependent percolation, Hugo Duminil-Copin has obtained major results on these classical models and their phase transitions, thus improving our understanding of critical phenomena in statistical physics at equilibrium.

Honors and awards

Hugo Duminil Copin’s work has earned him numerous awards. In 2012, he receives the Rollo Davidson Prize, together with Vincent Beffara, and the Vacheron Constantin Prize. In 2013, he is awarded the Oberwolfach Prize, before receiving the “Early Career Award” by the International Association of Mathematical Physics. In 2016, he receives the European Mathematical Society Award, and in 2017 the Breakthrough Foundation awards him the New Horizons in Mathematics Prize, reserved for particularly promising young scientists. The same year, he is awarded the Grand Prix Jacques Herbrand of the French Academy of Sciences and the Loève Prize for outstanding research in the field of mathematical probabilities. In 2018, he is among the invited speakers of the International Congress of Mathematicians held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Elected member of the Academia Europaea in 2019, he receives the Dobrushin Prize that same year.

Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques (IHES)

A founding member of Université Paris-Saclay, IHES is a private research center in mathematics, theoretical physics and all related disciplines. A private foundation recognized in the public interest, the Institute has a restricted number of permanent professors, mathematicians and theoretical physicists. Each year, it welcomes about 200 visitors from all over the world for research visits. Freedom of research, independence and interdisciplinarity are the values of the IHES, which is also committed to promoting the diversity of talent in fundamental research.

Université Paris-Saclay

Université Paris-Saclay brings together ten constituent faculties and institutes, four Grandes Écoles, the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques, two associate institutions and shared laboratories with national research organisations.

With 48,000 students, 8,100 lecturers and 8,500 administrative and technical staff members, Université Paris-Saclay offers a comprehensive and varied range of undergraduate to doctorate level programmes and engineering degrees, renowned for their quality thanks to the reputation and commitment of the University’s academic staff.

Located in the south of Paris on vast sites that stretch across Paris, Orsay, Évry and Versailles, Université Paris-Saclay benefits from a strategic geographical and socio-economic position that is strengthened by its international visibility. A leading University, Université Paris-Saclay is recognised for its excellent Mathematics and Physics programmes but also for Biological and Medical Sciences, Agriculture, Engineering, and its extensive Humanities and Social Sciences courses. Close to Paris, Université Paris-Saclay is nested in a protected natural area, at the very heart of a dynamic economic hub.

CNRS

The French National Center for Scientific Research is one of the most recognised and renowned public research institutions in the world. For more than 80 years, it has continued to attract talent at the highest level and to nurture multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary research projects at the national, European and international levels. Geared towards the public interest, it contributes to the scientific, economic, social and cultural progress of France. The CNRS is above all 32,000 women and men, more than 1,000 laboratories in partnership with universities and other higher education institutions bringing together more than 120,000 employees and 200 professions that advance knowledge by exploring the living world, matter, the Universe, and the functioning of human societies. The CNRS ensures that this mission is carried out in compliance with ethical rules and with a commitment to professional equality. The close relationship it establishes between its research missions and the transfer of acquired knowledge to the public makes it today a key player in innovation in France and around the world. Partnerships with companies are at the heart of its technology transfer policy, and the start-ups that have emerged from CNRS laboratories bear witness to the economic potential of its research. The CNRS provides also access to research findings and data, and this sharing of knowledge targets many audiences: scientific communities, the media, decision-makers, economic players and the general public.

University of Geneva

The University of Geneva, Switzerland, was founded in 1559 by Jean Calvin and Théodore de Bèze and ranks amongst the top 60 best universities in the world. It enjoys worldwide recognition and develops an ever-strengthening international network. The University of Geneva welcomes about 19’000 students in its nine faculties teaching Sciences, Medicine, Humanities, Economics and Management, Social Sciences, Law, Theology, Psychology and Educational Sciences, as well as Translation and Interpreting. The University of Geneva fulfils three missions: education, research and knowledge-sharing. It is a member of the League of European Research Universities since 2002 and is a founding partner of Campus Biotech, the life science hub for the Geneva Lake region.

 

(1) Other IHES permanent professors who received the Fields Medal:

• René Thom, 1958, permanent professor at IHES from 1963 to 1990
• Alexandre Grothendieck, 1966, permanent professor at IHES from 1958 to 1970
• Pierre Deligne, 1978, permanent professor at IHES from 1970 to 1984
• Alain Connes, 1982, holder of the Leon Motchane Chair since 1979, professor emeritus since 2017
• Jean Bourgain, 1994, permanent professor at IHES from 1985 to 1993
• Maxim Kontsevich, 1998, permanent professor at IHES since 1995
• Laurent Lafforgue, 2002, permanent professor at IHES from 2000 to 2021

(2) Other mathematicians of Université Paris-Saclay having received the Fields Medal:

• Jean-Christophe Yoccoz, 1994
• Wendelin Werner, 2006
• Ngô Bảo Châu, 2010

(3) Other mathematicians who received the Fields Medal and whose institution is affiliated to the CNRS:

• Laurent Schwartz, 1950
• Jean-Pierre Serre, 1954
• Pierre-Louis Lions, 1994
• Cédric Villani, 2010
• Artur Ávila, 2014

Press release – 7 September 2017

A permanent professor at the IHES since 2016, Hugo Duminil-Copin just received the Loève Prize (Berkeley, USA) and the Grand Prix Jacques Herbrand from the French Academy of Sciences. The European Research Council also awarded him a prestigious ERC Starting Grant. Barely recruited, Hugo Duminil-Copin received two international prizes last year: the European Mathematical Society Prize and the New Horizons Prize in Mathematics from the Breakthrough Foundation. The excellence and originality of his works continue to attract the attention of the scientific community. “The IHES has always bet on young mathematicians – 31 years on average – et the hiring of Hugo keeps this tradition alive. The prizes he continues to receive confirm the relevance of our policy” said Emmanuel Ullmo, director of the Institute.

The Grand Prix Jacques Herbrand is a prestigious award from the French Academy of Sciences which distinguishes young researchers under 35 years of age. It is allocated every two years to a mathematician and salutes the importance of his works to the progress of the mathematical sciences or their peaceful applications. Great names of mathematics and physics received this prize before him: Laurent Lafforgue, Nikita Nekrasov, Cédric Villani and Wendelin Werner to name a few.

Every two years, the Loève Prize honors researchers under 45 years of age for their work in the field of probabilities. Founded in memory of mathematician Michel Loève, the prize is awarded at Berkeley where the later created and animated a large school of probabilities. Hugo Duminil-Copin was also awarded a highly competitive grant from the European Research Council (ERC). The pioneering project he defended before the ERC proposes to use multiple techniques from probability, combinatorics, analysis and integrable systems to break new grounds in the understanding of phase transition.

The Grand Prix Jacques Herbrand
The Grand Prix Jacques Herbrand is awarded by the French Academy of Sciences alternatively to a mathematician or a physicist under 35 years of age. Created in 1996, the prize was awarded for the first time in 1998 and until 2002, both to a physicist and a mathematician.

The Loève Prize
The Line and Michel Loève Prize for Probability Theory was created in 1992 by Line Loève in memory of her late husband, Michel Loève, an American mathematician and statistician, who was a professor at Berkeley from 1948 until his death, in 1979.

The ERC Starting Grants
Those ERC grants are awarded to young researchers (between 2 and 7 years after the PhD) who have already produced excellent work and are ready to work independently and lead a research team within a European institution (or associated member of the EU).

Hugo Duminil-Copin has been awarded two international prizes that once again recognize the importance and the quality of his work: the Loève Prize and the Grand Prix Jacques Herbrand de l’Académie des Sciences.

The Loève Prize, formally The Line and Michel Loève International Prize in Probability, is awarded every two years to an outstanding researcher in probability who is under 45 years old. It was created in 1992 by Line Loève to commemorate her husband, Michel Loève who was a professor at Berkeley from 1948 until his death in 1979. This year’s prize will be awarded at a ceremony in Berkeley, at a date to be announced.

The Grand Prix Jacques Herbrand is awarded by the French Academy of Sciences alternately to a mathematician or a physicist younger than 35 years old and whose work is considered important for the progress of research in mathematical or physical sciences and their non-military applications. Created in 1996, it was awarded for the first time in 1998 and until 2002 to both a mathematician and a physicist. Initially named “Prix Jacques Herbrand”, the prize was renamed “Grand prix Jacques Herbrand” in 2001.

With this recognition, Hugo Duminil-Copin joins a group of laureates that includes several important names: Laurent Lafforgue, Nikita Nekrasov, Cédric Villani and Artur Avila, just to mention a few.

IHES congratulates Hugo Duminil-Copin for yet another important achievement!

Press Release – 5 December 2016

Founded by the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs Sergey Brin and Anne Wojcicki, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, and Yuri and Julia Milner, the different Breakthrough Prizes have been recognising the contribution of scientists in the domains of Mathematics, Physics and the Life Sciences for 5 years. The “New Horizons in Mathematics Prize”, celebrates mathematicians who have obtained important results since the beginning of their careers.

“If you think about the important fundamental research 100 years ago — from quantum theory leading to semiconductors, leading to integrated circuits — that is what we built everything we do on,” said Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google. “If those people weren’t developing their theories 100 years ago, we’d be living that same life, today.”

IHES is extremely happy about this international award for Hugo Duminil-Copin, after the prize he obtained last July from the European Mathematical Society. These prizes reward the Institute for its willingness to recruit young permanent professors. Aged only 31, Hugo Duminil-Copin joined the group of IHES permanent professors last September. He also benefited from prestigious support from Paris Saclay (IDEX Chair) to facilitate his installation and enhance his work environement.

This is the fourth time that the work of one of the Institute’s permanent members receives recognition from the Breakthrough Prize Foundation. Maxim Kontsevich had been one of the five awardees of the Inaugural Prize in Physics in 2012. Two years later he was awarded the Inaugural Prize in Mathematics and no one has achieved as much so far. “Mathematics is essential for driving human progress and innovation in this century. This year’s Breakthrough Prize winners have made huge contributions to the field and we’re excited to celebrate their efforts.” said then Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder and CEO.

This year, Thibault Damour was awarded a “Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics” that celebrates the detection of gravitational waves. This prize was assigned to the three creators of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) as well as to the 1005 co-authors of the article on the discovery of gravitational waves, and to seven more scientists who contributed significantly to the success of this experiment. Thibault Damour is one of them.

Born in 1985, Hogo Duminil-Copin is a probabilist. He studied at Univesité Paris XI and he obtained a teaching diploma in mathematics, agrégation, from École Normale Supérieure in Paris. He then moved to the University of Geneva where, after getting a PhD under the supervision of Stanislas Smirnov in 2012, he became assistant professor (2013-2014), and then professor in 2014. He has already been awarded several distinctions, among which the « Early Career Award of the International Association of Mathematical Physics » in 2015. Very recently he has been among the ten laureates of the European Mathematical Society Prize of 2016, which was awarded during the 7th European Congress of Mathematics.

Even though his main focus is on probability, his work has an impact on mathematical physics, complex and combinatorial analysis. He has published more than 30 papers in some of the highest impact journals of his field.

The works of Hugo Duminil-Copin have contributed significantly to percolation theory, a field in probability that describes the behaviour of connected clusters on a random graph. Particularly, his interest is directed to random walks, so called because at each step the direction of motion is chosen randomly. In collaboration with his PhD supervisor, Stanislas Smirnov, he has worked on self-avoiding walks (SAWs), where the walker never goes back to a position that he has already visited. The number of possible SAWs depends on the lattice on which the walker moves. For walks characterised by a very large number of steps, such number can be expressed in terms of a constant called  « connectivity constant ». Hugo Duminil-Copin calculated the connectivity constant for the honeycomb lattice. SAWs are at the heart of important physical questions. In statistical mechanics they are used as models for polymer chains.

As part of the series of lectures organised by IHES during March 2017, the so-called “Cours de l’IHES”, he will talk about “Sharp threshold phenomena in statistical physics”.

IHES is proud to welcome him as a new permanent professor, the first to focus on probability.

« Lieu unique au monde, l’Institut, créé en 1958, abrite l’élite des mathématiques et de la physique fondamentale. Avec tableaux noirs et craies. » PAR Cyrille Vanlerberghe
Retrouvez le beau portrait publié en juillet 2016 dans le Figaro

Born in 1985, Hugo Duminil-Copin is a probabilist. He obtained a teaching diploma in mathematics, “agrégation”, from École Normale Supérieure. He was a PhD student of Stanislas Smirnov at the University of Geneva, where he obtained his PhD in 2012 and where he is now a professor. In 2015 he was selected for the Peccot course of Collège de France.

The works of Hugo Duminil-Copin have contributed significantly to percolation theory, a field in probability that describes the behaviour of connected clusters on a random graph. Particularly, his interest is directed to random walks, so called because at each step the direction of motion is chosen randomly. In collaboration with his PhD supervisor, Stanislas Smirnov, he has worked on self-avoiding walks (SAWs), where the walker never goes back to a position that he has already visited. The number of possible SAWs depends on the lattice on which the walker moves. For walks characterised by a very large number of steps, such number can be expressed in terms of a constant called  “connectivity constant”. Hugo Duminil-Copin calculated the connectivity constant for the honeycomb lattice. SAWs are at the heart of important physical questions. In statistical mechanics they are used as models for polymer chains.