Châu Bao Ngô

From the American Mathematical Society:

" 'For his proof of the fundamental lemma in the theory of automorphic forms through the introduction of new algebro-geometric methods.'

Ngô Bao Châu removed one of the great impediments to a grand, decades-long program to uncover hidden connections between seemingly disparate areas of mathematics. In doing so, he provided a solid foundation for a large body of theory and developed techniques that are likely to unleash a flood of new results. Ngô Bao Châu was the one to finally break the problem open. The complicated identities in the fundamental lemma, he realized, could be seen as arising naturally out of sophisticated mathematical objects known as Hitchen fibrations. His approach was entirely novel and unexpected: Hitchen fibrations are purely geometric objects that are close to mathematical physics, nearly the last thing anyone expected to be relevant to this problem in the purest of pure math."

Fields Medalist, 2010