Vietnamese-French Fields Medalist receives Maurice Audin prize for math

A Vietnamese-French academic was presented with the Maurice Audin mathematics prize in Paris on Wednesday for his great contribution to the field, after a two-year wait.

According to the French website Images des mathématiques (or Images of Math), Prof. Ngo Bao Chau, 46, a Vietnamese-French mathematician at the University of Chicago, was announced the winner of the 2016 edition of the Maurice Audin prize.

Images des mathématiques is published by the French National Center for Scientific Research (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique – CNRS) and devoted to popularization in mathematics, with an aim to show the diversity of the science in an attractive way – words and pictures.

Prof. Chau is best known for proving the fundamental lemma for automorphic forms proposed by American-Canadian mathematician Robert Langlands and Australian mathematician Diana Shelstad.

He is the first Vietnamese national to have received the Fields Medal, which is dubbed mathematicians' "Nobel Prize," in 2010.

In 2011, he became the youngest professor appointed by the State Council for Professor Titles of Vietnam.

In the same year, he was also honored with the Legion of Honor, the highest French order for military and civil merits, established in 1802 by Napoleon Bonaparte, conferred by Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France at that time.

Created in 1958, after the death of Maurice Audin, a French mathematics assistant at the University of Algiers in Algeria, the Maurice Audin prize was awarded annually until 1963.

It was reactivated in 2004 and remained annual until 2012, but is now presented every two years.

The prize is sponsored by the French Mathematical Society (Société mathématique de France – SMF), the Society of Applied and Industrial Mathematics (Société de mathématiques appliquées et industrielles – SMAI), and the Maurice Audin association.

Traditionally, two awards ceremonies are held, one in Algeria and the other in France.

But circumstances meant that the 2016 prize-giving ceremony could only be held in Algeria, and only for the Algerian laureate – Bakir Farhi, who currently works at the Department of Mathematics, Béjaïa University, Algeria – on February 7, 2016.

It was finally possible for the French side to hold the award presentation ceremony at the Henri Poincaré Institute in Paris on Wednesday after a two-year delay.

The next edition of the Maurice Audin prize was also launched on this occasion.

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