Bảo Châu Ngô

Ngô Bảo Châu (born June 28, 1972, Hanoi) is a Vietnamese-French mathematician and Fields Medal laureate who is leaving the University of Chicago after 15 years to join the University of Hong Kong as a Chair Professor in June 2026. He is the first Vietnamese national to have received the Fields Medal.

Chau won the Fields Medal in 2010 for his proof of the Fundamental Lemma in the theory of automorphic forms, a long-standing conjecture in the Langlands Program linking geometry and number theory. Time magazine named the work one of the top 10 scientific discoveries of 2009. He received a French government scholarship to study mathematics in France at age 15, earning his PhD from the University of Paris-Sud in 1997.

Chau cited "many things I do not like" happening in the US as a reason for his departure, pointing to worsening conditions for international scholars around visas and immigration. He is drawn to Hong Kong's position as a crossroads between East and West and aims to help build a new regional centre for mathematical research in Asia, connecting mathematicians from China, India, Japan, Vietnam and Singapore.