Fields Medals 2026

"harmonic analysis and geometric measure theory, including applications of multiscale and decoupling techniques to the local smoothing conjecture for the planar wave equation, and major advances in Fourier restriction, Falconer distance sets, Furstenberg sets in the plane, and the Kakeya problem in three dimensions."

I'm not sure there is another profession in the world where it's impossible to explain to a layman on what the winners of their most prestigious award have worked on.

The winners were inadvertently announced early:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48905091

Congrats to the winners! I’m not sure how accurate this prediction is, but 2026 may be the last time pure humans win the Fields Medal. By 2030, AI could be a coauthor on many winning results. With recent news about LLMs solving major conjectures, winning IMO gold medals, and so much rapid progress, a lot is happening.

Reading the descriptions of their work makes me think of magic. It's an understanding of the principles of math and physics at a level above almost everyone on the planet - these are modern wizards.

Well deserved. Congratulations to them!