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Ling Xin

Award-winning Japanese mathematician Kenji Fukaya has left Stony Brook University in the US to join China’s Tsinghua University as a full-time professor.
Fukaya, previously a permanent member of the Simons Centre for Geometry and Physics at Stony Brook, delivered his first lecture at Tsinghua on September 11, according to the university’s Yau Mathematical Sciences Centre.
His open course on symplectic geometry – which studies spaces where objects such as planets and particles move and interact – drew a large audience of students and teachers, the centre reported on its official WeChat account.

In a video shared by the centre, Fukaya said Chinese students reminded him of Japanese students from his youth because both showed strong focus and dedication to studying mathematics.
He expressed hope that as more researchers born in China returned to teach there, a community of highly skilled, domestically educated mathematicians would continue to grow.
Fukaya is affiliated with both the Yau Mathematical Sciences Centre and the Beijing Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Applications, institutions founded at Tsinghua by Chinese-American mathematician Shing-Tung Yau.
He is widely recognised as a mathematician with global influence, according to the centre. His early research focused on Riemannian geometry, where he studied how shapes behave when they collapse or shrink.
Since the 1990s, he has shifted his focus to symplectic geometry, developing powerful tools for areas such as low-dimensional topology and mirror symmetry, according to the centre. His research bridges different areas of mathematics and physics, and provides insights into complex systems.
“It is not only highly original, but also opened up new frontiers in geometry,” the centre quoted Yau as saying.
Fukaya earned his PhD in mathematics from the University of Tokyo in 1986. He worked at the university from 1983 to 1990, first as a research assistant and then as an associate professor, before becoming a full professor at Kyoto University in 1994.


“Mathematics, in a sense, is free,” Fukaya said in the video. “We can create a mathematical world which consists of sequences of facts, such as theorems. To prove these theorems, you need to use your imagination and sense of beauty.
“It’s a mixture of personal sense of beauty and external tests of logic. I think that’s the best part of mathematics.”
Fukaya has received numerous awards, including the 1989 Geometry Prize from the Mathematical Society of Japan, the 2002 Inoue Prize for Science, the 2003 Japan Academy Prize, the 2009 Asahi Prize and the 2012 Fujiwara Prize. He is also a member of the Japan Academy.


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In a video, Fukaya said Chinese students reminded him of Japanese students’ strong focus and dedication to studying mathematics


In a video, Fukaya said Chinese students reminded him of Japanese students’ strong focus and dedication to studying mathematics.
