Yau Shing-tung is a Harvard professor and a foreign academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Born in Guangdong, China, he grew up in Hong Kong and took up the study of mathematics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1966. Later he attended UC Berkeley in the fall of 1969. At the early age of 22, Yau was awarded a PhD under the supervision of mathematics master Chern Shiing-Shen. Yau has been a professor at Stanford University and was a tenured professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton at 28.

Yau has made significant contributions to physics and mathematics. He has solved a series of complex math puzzles such as the Calabi conjecture, the Smith conjecture, the positive mass conjecture and the Mirror conjecture. The Calabi-Yau manifolds, named after him, are part of the "standard toolkit" for string theorists today.

Yau has received a number of awards. He earned the Fields Medal in 1982 when he was only 34, the Crafoord Prize in 1994, the (US) National Medal of Science in 1997, and the latest, the 2010 Wolf Prize in Mathematics for "his work in geometric analysis and mathematical physics".

Yau is one of 13 mathematicians to win both the Fields Medal and the Wolf Prize in Mathematics.

With the aim of improving Chinese mathematical expertise, Yau started educating students from China, then establishing mathematics research institutes and centers, organizing conferences at all levels, initiating outreach programs, and raising private funds to support the programs. The first of Yau's initiatives was the Institute of Mathematical Sciences at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1993, followed by the Morningside Center of Mathematics in Beijing and the Center of Mathematical Sciences at Zhejiang University. Yau is director of all three math institutes and visits them on a regular basis. He also persuaded the National Tsinghua University at Hsinchu, Taiwan, to establish the National Center of Theoretical Sciences in 1998.

Yau began organizing the International Congress of Chinese Mathematicians, which has been held every three years since 1998.

In view of these, Yau was presented with the China International Scientific and Technological Cooperation Award in 2003, for "his outstanding contribution to the country in aspects of making progress in sciences and technology, training researchers".

Guo Jiaxue

(HK Edition 06/02/2010 page2)