Hong Wang Receives the 2026 Qiu Shi Outstanding Scientist Award

August 26, 2026

Hong Wang, Silver Professor of Mathematics, received the 2026 Outstanding Scientist Award from the Qiu Shi Science & Technologies Foundation this week. The award recognizes outstanding achievements in the field of Mathematics. In particular, Professor Wang is honored for her pioneering contributions to homotopy theory and the computation of stable homotopy groups of spheres, including the development of the motivic deformation method, and her resolution of the final 126-dimensional case of the Kervaire invariant problem.

The Qiu Shi Science & Technologies Foundation was established in Hong Kong in 1994 by entrepreneur and philanthropist Cha Chi Ming (1914-2007) and his family.  Their mission is to promote scientific and technological progress for the benefit of humanity. Over the past three decades, the Qiu Shi Awards have come to represent one of the highest honors for Chinese scientists. The 2026 Outstanding Scientist Award carries a prize of $1 million Hong Kong Dollars. Professor Wang will attend the Foundation’s annual award ceremony this November at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Professor Wang joined Courant’s faculty in 2023 and was named a Silver Professor of Mathematics earlier this year; she also serves as Permanent Professor at the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques. She is widely celebrated for her work in harmonic analysis and geometric measure theory, including her 2025 resolution of the long-standing Kakeya set conjecture. Professor Wang has been recognized with several recent awards, including the prestigious Fields Medal last month.