Maryna Sergiivna Viazovska ( uk, Марина Сергіївна Вязовська, ; born 2 December 1984) is a Ukrainian mathematician known for her work in

sphere packing In geometry, a sphere packing is an arrangement of non-overlapping spheres within a containing space. The spheres considered are usually all of identical size, and the space is usually three-dimensional Euclidean space. However, sphere packing p ...

. She is full professor and Chair of

Number Theory Number theory (or arithmetic or higher arithmetic in older usage) is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers and arithmetic function, integer-valued functions. German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777� ...

at the Institute of Mathematics of the

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * École, Savoi ...

in Switzerland. She was awarded the

Fields Medal The Fields Medal is a prize awarded to two, three, or four mathematicians under 40 years of age at the International Congress of the International Mathematical Union (IMU), a meeting that takes place every four years. The name of the award ho ...

in 2022.

Education and career

Viazovska was born in

Kyiv Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the List of European cities by populat ...

, the oldest of three sisters. Her father was a chemist who worked at the

Antonov Antonov State Enterprise ( uk, Державне підприємство «Антонов»), formerly the Aeronautical Scientific-Technical Complex named after Antonov (Antonov ASTC) ( uk, Авіаційний науково-технічни� ...

aircraft factory and her mother an engineer. She attended a specialized secondary school for high-achieving students in science and technology, Kyiv Natural Science Lyceum No. 145. An influential teacher there, Andrii Knyazyuk, had previously worked as a professional research mathematician before becoming a secondary school teacher. Viazovska competed in domestic mathematics Olympiads when she was at high school, placing 13th in a national competition where 12 students were selected to a training camp before a six-member team for the

International Mathematical Olympiad The International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) is a mathematical olympiad for pre-university students, and is the oldest of the International Science Olympiads. The first IMO was held in Romania in 1959. It has since been held annually, except i ...

was chosen. As a student at

Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv Kyiv University or Shevchenko University or officially the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv ( uk, Київський національний університет імені Тараса Шевченка), colloquially known as KNU ...

, she competed at the

International Mathematics Competition for University Students The International Mathematics Competition (IMC) for University Students is an annual mathematics competition open to all undergraduate students of mathematics. Participating students are expected to be at most twenty three years of age at the time ...

in 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005, and was one of the first-place winners in 2002 and 2005. She co-authored her first research paper in 2005. Viazovska earned a master's from the

University of Kaiserslautern Technical University of Kaiserslautern (German: ''Technische Universität Kaiserslautern'', also known as TU Kaiserslautern or TUK) is a public university, public research university in Kaiserslautern, Germany. There are numerous institutes arou ...

in 2007, PhD from the Institute of Mathematics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in 2010, and a doctorate (

Dr. rer. nat. ''Doctor rerum naturalium'' ( for, , Latin, doctor of natural sciences, lit. 'doctor of the things of nature'), abbreviated Dr. rer. nat., is a doctoral academic degree awarded by universities in some European countries (e.g. Germany, Austria and C ...

) from the

University of Bonn The Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (german: Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn) is a public research university located in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the ( en, Rhine U ...

in 2013. Her doctoral dissertation, ''Modular Functions and Special Cycles'', concerns

analytic number theory In mathematics, analytic number theory is a branch of number theory that uses methods from mathematical analysis to solve problems about the integers. It is often said to have begun with Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet's 1837 introduction of Diric ...

and was supervised by

Don Zagier Don Bernard Zagier (born 29 June 1951) is an American-German mathematician whose main area of work is number theory. He is currently one of the directors of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn, Germany. He was a professor at the ''Col ...

and Werner Müller. She was a postdoctoral researcher at the Berlin Mathematical School and the

Humboldt University of Berlin Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (german: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a German public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin. It was established by Frederick William III on the initiative o ...

and a Minerva Distinguished Visitor at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

. Since January 2018 she has held the Chair of Number Theory as a

full professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...

at the

(EPFL) in Switzerland after a short stint as

tenure-track Tenure is a category of academic appointment existing in some countries. A tenured post is an indefinite academic appointment that can be terminated only for cause or under extraordinary circumstances, such as financial exigency or program disco ...

assistant professor.

Contributions

In 2016, Viazovska solved the sphere-packing problem in

dimension In physics and mathematics, the dimension of a Space (mathematics), mathematical space (or object) is informally defined as the minimum number of coordinates needed to specify any Point (geometry), point within it. Thus, a Line (geometry), lin ...

8. Her dimension 8 solution quickly led to collaboration with others, and a solution in dimension 24. Previously, the problem had been solved only for three or fewer dimensions, and the proof of the three-dimensional version (the

Kepler conjecture The Kepler conjecture, named after the 17th-century mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler, is a mathematical theorem about sphere packing in three-dimensional Euclidean space. It states that no arrangement of equally sized spheres filling s ...

) involved long computer calculations. In contrast, Viazovska's proof for 8 and 24 dimensions is "stunningly simple". As well as for her work on sphere packing, Viazovska is also known for her research on

spherical design A spherical design, part of combinatorial design theory in mathematics, is a finite set of ''N'' points on the ''d''-dimensional unit n-sphere, ''d''-sphere ''Sd'' such that the average value of any polynomial ''f'' of degree ''t'' or less on the se ...

s with Bondarenko and Radchenko. With them she proved a conjecture of Korevaar and Meyers on the existence of small designs in arbitrary dimensions. This result was one of the contributions for which her co-author Andriy Bondarenko won the Vasil A. Popov Prize for

approximation theory In mathematics, approximation theory is concerned with how function (mathematics), functions can best be approximation, approximated with simpler functions, and with quantitative property, quantitatively characterization (mathematics), characteri ...

in 2013.

Recognition

In 2016, Viazovska received the

Salem Prize The Salem Prize, in memory of Raphael Salem, is awarded each year to young researchers for outstanding contributions to the field of analysis. It is awarded by the School of Mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and was fo ...

and, in 2017, the

Clay Research Award __NOTOC__ The Clay Research Award is an annual award given by the Oxford-based Clay Mathematics Institute to mathematicians to recognize their achievement in mathematical research. The following mathematicians have received the award: {, class=" ...

and the

SASTRA Ramanujan Prize The SASTRA Ramanujan Prize, founded by Shanmugha Arts, Science, Technology & Research Academy (SASTRA) located near Kumbakonam, India, Srinivasa Ramanujan's hometown, is awarded every year to a young mathematician judged to have done outstanding ...

for her work on sphere packing and

modular form In mathematics, a modular form is a (complex) analytic function on the upper half-plane satisfying a certain kind of functional equation with respect to the Group action (mathematics), group action of the modular group, and also satisfying a grow ...

s. In December 2017, she was awarded a 2018 New Horizons Prize in Mathematics. She was an invited speaker at the 2018

International Congress of Mathematicians The International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) is the largest conference for the topic of mathematics. It meets once every four years, hosted by the International Mathematical Union (IMU). The Fields Medals, the Nevanlinna Prize (to be rename ...

. For 2019 she was awarded the

Ruth Lyttle Satter Prize in Mathematics The Ruth Lyttle Satter Prize in Mathematics, also called the Satter Prize, is one of twenty-one prizes given out by the American Mathematical Society (AMS). It is presented biennially in recognition of an outstanding contribution to mathematics ...

and the

Fermat Prize The Fermat prize of mathematical research biennially rewards research works in fields where the contributions of Pierre de Fermat have been decisive: * Statements of variational principles * Foundations of probability and analytic geometry * Numb ...

. She is one of the 2020 winners of the

EMS Prize The European Mathematical Society (EMS) is a European organization dedicated to the development of mathematics in Europe. Its members are different mathematical societies in Europe, academic institutions and individual mathematicians. The current ...

. In 2020, she also received the National Latsis Prize awarded by the

Latsis Foundation The Latsis Foundation (French: ''Fondation Latsis internationale'') is a charitable foundation, founded in 1975 by the Greek shipping magnate John Latsis. Amongst other prizes and symposia, it funds the University Latsis Prizes (awarded by the U ...

. She was elected to the

Academia Europaea The Academia Europaea is a pan-European Academy of Humanities, Letters, Law, and Sciences. The Academia was founded in 1988 as a functioning Europe-wide Academy that encompasses all fields of scholarly inquiry. It acts as co-ordinator of Europea ...

in 2021. She was appointed Senior Scholar at the

Clay Mathematics Institute The Clay Mathematics Institute (CMI) is a private, non-profit foundation (nonprofit), foundation dedicated to increasing and disseminating mathematics, mathematical knowledge. Formerly based in Peterborough, New Hampshire, the corporate address i ...

in July 2022. She was awarded the

in July 2022, making her the second woman (after

Maryam Mirzakhani Maryam Mirzakhani ( fa, مریم میرزاخانی, ; 12 May 1977 – 14 July 2017) was an Iranian mathematician and a professor of mathematics at Stanford University. Her research topics included Teichmüller theory, hyperbolic geometry, ...

), the second person born in the Ukrainian SSR and the first with a degree from a Ukrainian university to ever receive it. She was honored as one of the

BBC 100 Women ''100 Women'' is a BBC multi-format series established in 2013. The annual series examines the role of women in the 21st century and has included events in London and Mexico. Announcement of the list is the start of an international "BBC's women ...

in December 2022.

Family

Viazovska met her husband, Daniil Evtushinsky, at an after-school physics group for schoolchildren. He is also a researcher at EPFL, in physics. They have two children, a son and a daughter.

Selected publications

* * * *

References

External links

Home page of Maryna Viazovska
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Viazovska, Maryna 1984 births Living people Scientists from Kyiv Ukrainian mathematicians Ukrainian women mathematicians University of Bonn alumni Geometers Number theorists Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv alumni Academic staff of the Humboldt University of Berlin Academic staff of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne Members of Academia Europaea Fields Medalists BBC 100 Women