Maryna Viazovska

Maryna Viazovska was born in 1984 in Kyiv, in what was then Soviet Ukraine, and showed an early talent for mathematics, competing in olympiads before studying at Kyiv University. She later moved abroad for graduate study, eventually earning a doctorate in Germany, part of a generation of Ukrainian scientists who built careers across Europe as opportunities at home remained limited.

Her major breakthrough concerned the sphere packing problem: the question of how to arrange identical spheres in space so they take up the least wasted room, a puzzle mathematicians had struggled with for centuries even in three dimensions. In 2016, working largely alone, Viazovska found the precise, optimal arrangement in eight dimensions, using a mathematical object called a modular form to construct a proof of striking elegance that had eluded specialists for decades. Days later, working with collaborators, she extended the method to solve the problem in 24 dimensions as well.

The achievement brought recognition across mathematics, and in 2022 she was awarded the Fields Medal, mathematics' highest honour, becoming only the second woman to receive it since the prize began in 1936. She received the news the same year Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, and has since used her platform to support Ukrainian scientists and students displaced by the war.

She continues to work as a professor in Switzerland, researching the mathematics of lattices and number theory.