# Fields Medal winners born in the Soviet Union

The Fields Medal, the highest honour in mathematics for researchers under 40, is awarded every four years. Ten mathematicians born in the Soviet Union have won it: from Sergei Novikov in 1970, who was not allowed to attend the ceremony, to Grigori Perelman, who declined the medal, and Maryna Viazovska in 2022.

- 38 votes · 10 items
- Jul 22, 2022 · Владимир Лебедев
- https://even.best/en/l/5428/fields-medal-winners-born-in-the-soviet-union

## Top 10

1. **Grigory Margulis** (8 · ▲8 ▼0) — Fields Medal 1978. Born in Moscow. He too could not collect the medal in person in Helsinki.
2. **Efim Zelmanov** (6 · ▲6 ▼0) — Fields Medal 1994. Born in Khabarovsk. For solving the restricted Burnside problem.
3. **Vladimir Drinfeld** (5 · ▲5 ▼0) — Fields Medal 1990. Born in Kharkiv. Quantum groups and the Langlands programme.
4. **Maxim Kontsevich** (5 · ▲5 ▼0) — Fields Medal 1998. Born in Khimki. Mathematical physics, knot theory and quantisation.
5. **Sergei Novikov** (3 · ▲3 ▼0) — Fields Medal 1970. Born in Gorky. For his work in topology. The authorities did not let him travel to the ceremony in Nice.
6. **Vladimir Voevodsky** (3 · ▲3 ▼0) — Fields Medal 2002. Born in Moscow. Motivic cohomology and the proof of the Milnor conjecture.
7. **Andrei Okounkov** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — Fields Medal 2006. Born in Moscow. Bridging probability, representation theory and algebraic geometry.
8. **Stanislav Smirnov** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — Fields Medal 2010. Born in Leningrad. Conformal invariance of percolation and the Ising model.
9. **Grigori Perelman** (0 · ▲1 ▼1) — Fields Medal 2006. Born in Leningrad. Proved the Poincaré conjecture and declined the medal.
10. **Maryna Viazovska** (0 · ▲1 ▼1) — Fields Medal 2022. Born in Kyiv. A Ukrainian mathematician who solved the densest sphere packing problem in dimension 8; the second woman to win the Fields Medal.

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