Professor June Huh, Alumni of the Department of Mathematical Sciences (Yonhap)

Professor June Huh (Princeton University) won the Fields Medal, the best honor in mathematics, for the first time as a scholar from the Korean mathematics society at the 2022 International Congress of Mathematicians. The Fields Medal is recognized for its authority comparable to that of the Nobel Prize for outstanding achievements in the field of natural science.

The International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM), also referred to as the Olympic Games of Mathematics, is a festival for mathematicians around the world. It holds discussions and lectures on various fields of mathematics and awards the Fields Medal to mathematicians under the age of 40 for outstanding achievements over the past four years.

June Huh’s field of research is combinatorial algebraic geometry. It is a relatively new field that solves the problem of combinatorics, which examines research objects such as networks through the methodology of algebraic geometry that studies geometric objects based on arithmetic operations. June Huh is recognized as a representative researcher of combinatorial algebraic geometry by solving many of the old challenges of combinatorics based on the profound outcomes of algebraic geometry.

Professor June Huh entered the Department of Physics at Seoul National University in 2002 and graduated from the Department of Physics and Astronomy (physics major) and completed his master's degree in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at Seoul National University in 2009. Professor Kiem, Young-Hoon of the Department of Mathematical Sciences at Seoul National University said, "He completed his PhD in mathematics at the University of Michigan, but he set up his research topic during his master’s degree through the lectures by Professor Hironaka, who was a recipient of the 1970 Fields Medal, which led to his later achievements. Professor June Huh grew as a mathematician with Seoul National University and the Korean system as his stepping stone."

Seoul National University carried out the ‘Nobel Prize Project’ in 2008 to produce Nobel Prize laureates. As a part of the project, Seoul National University appointed distinguished international scholars as professors, such as Hironaka Heisuke, a winner of Fields Medal, which is known as the Nobel Prize in Mathematics, and professor emeritus at Harvard University, Paul J. Crutzen in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, a 1995 Nobel Prize laureate in Chemistry, and Anthony Woodwiss in the Department of Sociology, who was the dean of the College of Social Sciences at the City, University of London.