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The Fields Medal, which is often considered the mathematical equivalent of the Nobel Prize, is granted every four years and is given, in accordance with the prize’s statutes, to mathematicians under the age of 40.

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Why is mathematicians not given a Nobel Prize?

A more likely explanation is that Nobel did not consider mathematics as a practical discipline, and too theoretical to benefit humankind, as well as his personal lack of interest in the field and the fact that an award to mathematicians given by Oscar II already existed at the time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_controversies

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The Fields Medal

Fields Medal, award granted to between two and four mathematicians for outstanding research and for the potential for future accomplishments. The Fields Medal, which is often considered the mathematical equivalent of the Nobel Prize, is granted every four years and is given, in accordance with the prize’s statutes, to mathematicians under the age of 40.

The Fields Medal originated from surplus funds raised by John Charles Fields (1863–1932), a professor of mathematics at the University of Toronto, as organizer and president of the 1924 International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in Toronto. The Committee of the International Congress had $2,700 left after printing the conference proceedings and voted to set aside $2,500 for the establishment of two medals to be awarded at later congresses. Following an endowment from Fields’s estate, the proposed awards—contrary to his explicit request—became known as the Fields Medals.

The first two Fields Medals were awarded in 1936. An anonymous donation allowed the number of medals awarded at each congress to increase, from two to as many as four, starting in 1966. Medalists also receive a cash award.
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https://www.britannica.com/science/Fields-Medal

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https://stats.areppim.com/stats/stats_fieldsxnation.htm

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The list above has left out the Chinese winner Shing-Tung Yau in 1982.

Britannica

Fields Medal

mathematics award

Written and fact-checked by

Last Updated: Nov 17, 2023 •Article History

Category: Science & Tech Born: April 4, 1949, Swatow, China (age 74) Awards And Honors: Fields Medal (1983) Subjects Of Study: differential geometry elliptic equation

Shing-Tung Yau (born April 4, 1949, Swatow, China) Chinese-born mathematician who won the 1982 Fields Medal for his work in differential geometry.

Yau received a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1971. Between 1971 and 1987 he held appointments at a number of institutions, including Stanford (Calif.) University (1974–79), the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J. (1979–84), and the University of California, San Diego (1984–87). In 1987 he became a professor at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

Yau received the Fields Medal at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Warsaw in 1983 for his work in global differential geometry and elliptic partial differential equations, particularly for solving such difficult problems as the Calabi conjecture of 1954 for both the Kähler and Einstein-Kähler metric cases, the positive mass conjecture (with Richard Schoen), and a problem of Hermann Minkowski’s concerning the Dirichlet problem for the real Monge-Ampère equation. In the early 1980s Yau and William H. Meeks solved an open question remaining from Jesse Douglas’s work on the Plateau problem in the 1930s.

Yau’s publications include Non-linear Analysis in Geometry (1986) and, with Robert Greene, Differential Geometry (1993). This article was most recently revised and updated by Erik Gregersen.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Shing-Tung-Yau

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Anonymous

Upvoted by

David Joyce, Ph.D. Mathematics, University of Pennsylvania (1979)9y

Shing-Tung Yau is Chinese, and won the medal in 1982. But it is true that there are very few.

I believe Yau has made some comments about this situation. He points out that academia is very corrupt in China (for example, letters of recommendation are often fraudulent, or obtained through political connections). This makes it very hard to train good researchers, or for the good ones to be recognized. Yau has started many projects to combat this (and made political enemies in the process), but of course change is slow.

Much of it is also cultural. Pure math is less respected in China than in neighboring Japan, which has several Fields Medalists (despite less impressive IMO performance).

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https://www.quora.com/Why-have-no-fields-medals-been-awarded-to-anyone-from-China

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