A University of Toronto professor has been awarded what’s been described as the “Nobel Prize” of mathematics for solving a problem that’s stumped mathematicians for decades. The school announced Thursday that Jacob Tsimerman won the prestigious Fields Medal for his work in proving the André-Oort conjecture. They described the mathematical conundrum as a complex theory that concerns the appearance of highly special points inside geometric spaces that encode rich arithmetic information. Tsimerman, who earned his bachelor’s degree in mathematics at U of T in just two years after starting his studies at 16 years old, is the first scholar at a Canadian institution to win the award and only the second Canadian ever to get the honour. “Math is such a team sport that it becomes impossible to disentangle who contributed what on projects. I’m lucky to have many of my collaborators as close friends, which helps work feel fun and playful,” Tsimerman said in a statement. The math prodigy says he’s been toiling with puzzles ever since he was three years old, and was surrounded by brains in his early years through his physicist grandfather and math teacher mother. “I had a lot of support and resources growing up, along with plenty of puzzles to solve. And that’s what mathematics is, basically: puzzles.” Before Thursday’s honour, Tsimerman’s previous accomplishments include two gold medals at the International Mathematical Olympiad and a perfect score in the competition in 2004. He earned his PhD from Princeton in 2011 and before he joined U of T—where he became the youngest person ever get full professor status in the department of mathematics—he was a junior fellow in Harvard University’s Society of Fellows. The Fields is awarded every four years by the International Mathematical Union to up to four mathematicians under the age of 40. The award is named after John Charles Fields, a Canadian mathematician who also studied and taught at U of T. Tsimerman is expected to speak to reporters later this afternoon following an awards ceremony in Toronto.
