Ngô Bảo Châu

Early Life and Education

Ngô Bảo Châu was born on 28 June 1972 in Hanoi, into an academic family, his father, Ngô Huy Cẩn, was a professor and doctor of science in fluid mechanics, and his mother, Trần Lưu Vân Hiền, was an associate professor working in pharmacy. He showed exceptional mathematical talent early on and studied in the specialized mathematics class at the High School for Gifted Students attached to Hanoi National University. He won gold medals at the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) in both 1988 and 1989, achieving a perfect score of 42/42 in 1989.

Career

In 1992, Châu moved to France on a French government scholarship, studying at the École Normale Supérieure and Université Paris VI. He earned his PhD from Université Paris-Sud (Paris XI) in 1997 under the supervision of Gérard Laumon, and completed his Habilitation in 2003. He worked as a researcher for the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and later as a professor at Université Paris-Sud. In 2007 he proved the "Fundamental Lemma" in the Langlands program, work that Time magazine named one of the top ten scientific discoveries of 2009. In 2010, at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Hyderabad, India, he was awarded the Fields Medal, mathematics' highest honor, often called the "Nobel Prize of Mathematics", becoming the first Vietnamese national to receive it. That same year he joined the faculty of the University of Chicago, where he has served as Chair of the Mathematics Department since 2023. He has also served as the founding scientific director of the Vietnam Institute for Advanced Study in Mathematics (VIASM) since 2011.

Personal Life

Ngô Bảo Châu married Nguyễn Bảo Thanh, a former classmate from his specialized mathematics class in Hanoi, in 1994; the couple have three daughters. He regularly returns to Vietnam to support mathematics education and research, and remains an influential figure in inspiring younger generations of Vietnamese students toward mathematics.