After Vietnamese mathematician Ngo Bao Chau won the world’s top mathematics prize, the Fields Medal, last Thursday, much has been said about how a child of the Vietnam war could manage to make his journey from war-torn Hanoi to the pages of Time magazine.
38-year-old Chau currently works at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and will join the mathematics faculty at the University of Chicago on September 1.
He is holding both Vietnamese and French citizenship. Chau is best known for proving the fundamental lemma proposed by Robert Langlands and Diana Shelstad, an achievement which was selected by Time as one of the Top Ten Scientific Discoveries of 2009.
For his works, Chau was awarded the 2004 Clay Research Award. He also became the youngest professor in Vietnam in 2005. This year he received the Fields Medal.
Chau is the only son to an intellectual family in Hanoi, Vietnam. His father, professor Ngo Huy Can, is a full professor in Physics at the Vietnam National Institute of Mechanics. His mother, Tran Luu Van Hien, is an associate professor-doctor in a hospital in Hanoi.
At the age of 15, he was admitted into a mathematics-specializing class of the Vietnam National University High School, formerly known as A0-class. In grade 11 and 12, Chau participated respectively in the 29th and 30th International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) and became the first Vietnamese student to win two IMO gold medals, of which the first one was won with a perfect score.
After high school, Chau prepared to study in Budapest but in the aftermath of the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, the new Hungarian government stopped providing scholarships to students from Vietnam.
He was then offered a scholarship by the French government for undergraduate study at the Paris VI University but he chose to study in the prestigious Ecole Normale Supérieure. He obtained a PhD in 1997 from the Universite Paris-Sud under the supervision of Gérard Laumon.
He became member of CNRS at the Paris 13 University, where he stayed from 1998 to 2005. There, he defended his habilitation degree in 2003. He became Professor at Paris-Sud 11 University in 2005.
In 2005 Chau received the title of professor in Vietnam and thus became the youngest professor ever in Vietnam at the age of 33. Currently, Chau is working at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey and holding a position at the Hanoi Institute of Mathematics. He has accepted a professorship at the University of Chicago.
In 2004 Chau and Laumon were awarded the Clay Research Award for their achievement in solving the fundamental lemma proposed by Robert Langlands for the case of unitary groups.
Chau eventually succeeded in formulating the proof for the general case of Langlands's lemma in 2008, a result that was praised by the number theorist Peter Sarnak: "It's as if people were working on the far side of the river waiting for someone to throw this bridge across. And now all of sudden everyone's work on the other side of the river has been proven."
Chau's success was selected by Time as one of the Top Ten Scientific Discoveries of 2009. On August 19, 2010, Chau was awarded the 2010 Fields Medal at the ICM 2010 in Hyderabad, India, for his proof of the general case of the fundamental lemma through the introduction of new algebraic geometry methods.
Below is what Time Magazine wrote about Chau:
In 1979 the Canadian-American mathematician Robert Langlands developed an ambitious and revolutionary theory that connected two branches of mathematics called number theory and group theory.
In a dazzling set of conjectures and insights, the theory captured deep symmetries associated with equations that involve whole numbers, laying out what is now known as the Langlands program.
Langlands knew that the task of proving the assumptions that underlie his theory would be the work of generations. But he was convinced that one stepping stone that needed confirmation — dubbed the "fundamental lemma" — would be reasonably straightforward.
He, his collaborators and his students were able to prove special cases of this fundamental theorem. But proving the general case proved more difficult than Langlands anticipated — so difficult, in fact, that it took 30 years to finally achieve.
Over the past few years, Ngo Bao Chau, a Vietnamese mathematician working at Université Paris-Sud and the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, formulated an ingenious proof of the fundamental lemma.
When it was checked this year and confirmed to be correct, mathematicians around the globe breathed a sigh of relief. Mathematicians' work in this area in the last three decades was predicated on the principle that the fundamental lemma was indeed accurate and would one day be proved.
"It's as if people were working on the far side of the river waiting for someone to throw this bridge across," says Peter Sarnak, a number theorist at IAS. "And now all of sudden everyone's work on the other side of the river has been proven."
Right after getting news about the Fields Medal award to Professor Ngo Bao Chau, President Nguyen Minh Triet and Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung sent letters of congratulation.
The Prime Minister called the award a big honor for the professor and his family, a matter of pride for the Vietnamese nation, and a strong encouragement for young Vietnamese scientists.
“I strongly believe that with iron wills and with the support of seniors and masters, including you, our nation’s young scientists will have more and more achievements that redound to the glory of the Vietnamese nation,” Dung’s letter reads.
President Triet said he highly appreciated Chau’s achievements and valuable contribution to mathematics, a feat that has brought pride and big honor to Vietnam.
Triet emphasized that Chau’s award is also a triumph for Vietnam’s mathematics, and expressed hope that Chau will continue making contribution to Vietnam’s and the world’s mathematics.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Prime Minister Francois Fillon have also expressed their admiration to Ngo Bao Chau and Cedric Villani, the medal winners who have ties to France.
International press agencies have covered the Fields Awards actively. Many paid special attention to Chau’s achievements.
The next story is about how the success of Ngo Bao Chau makes people wonder about the situation of Vietnamese maths sector. To be continued...
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