The Shape of a Life

This is the story of my odyssey—between China, Hong Kong, and the United States. I have traveled the world in my pursuit of geometry—a field that is crucial to our attempts to map out the universe on both the largest and smallest scales. Conjectures have been made during these excursions, “open problems” raised, and various theorems proved. But work in mathematics is almost never done in isolation. We build upon history and are shaped by myriad interactions.

Professor Yau is the William Caspar Graustein Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University. His research interests include differential geometry, differential equations, and general relativity. He is a member of several academies including Academia Sinica, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the National Academy of Sciences. Past honors include the Fields Medal (1982), the Crafoord Prize in Mathematics (1994), the U.S. National Medal of Science (1997), the Wolf Prize (2010), and Marcel Grossmann Award (2018).