Fang-Hua Lin

Fang-Hua Lin is a mathematician specializing in partial differential equations and geometric analysis who left New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, where he spent nearly four decades and became one of its first Silver Professors, to join his alma mater, Zhejiang University in China, as a Qiushi Chair Professor in September 2026. Zhejiang University announced the appointment on September 14, 2026, describing Qiushi Chair Professors as leading scholars with major contributions to their fields and broad international influence who are required to work full-time at the university.

Born in Ningbo, in China's Zhejiang province, Lin worked carrying stones for seawall construction in his hometown before entering Zhejiang University's mathematics department in 1977. Despite a weak high school academic foundation that left him near the bottom of his class in an early assessment, he responded by studying roughly 12 hours a day and became one of the university's top mathematics students, earning his bachelor's degree in 1981.

Lin then moved to the United States, earning his PhD in mathematics from the University of Minnesota in 1985 before joining NYU's Courant Institute that same year. His rise was rapid: in 1988, at age 29, he was appointed a full professor of mathematics at the University of Chicago, skipping the associate professor rank, before returning to NYU the following year as a tenured professor and becoming one of the Courant Institute's first Silver Professors in 2002. He also held research, teaching, and visiting positions at UC Berkeley, the University of Chicago, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

His research spans partial differential equations, geometric measure theory, and geometric and applied analysis, including work on liquid crystals, homogenization, and geometric variational problems. He has published more than 200 papers in leading journals including Annals of Mathematics, Acta Mathematica, and the Journal of the American Mathematical Society, and was an invited speaker at the 1990 International Congress of Mathematicians. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004 and the US National Academy of Sciences in 2025, and his honors include the American Mathematical Society's Bôcher Memorial Prize (2002) and the S.S. Chern Prize at the International Congress of Chinese Mathematicians (2004).

Despite building his career in the US, Lin maintained close academic ties with China, returning first in 1989 and making frequent trips for teaching, research collaborations, and conferences. He helped establish the mathematics program at NYU Shanghai — a joint venture between NYU and East China Normal University — serving as associate provost and founding co-director of the NYU-ECNU Institute of Mathematical Sciences, and helped design the university's undergraduate and honors mathematics curricula. NYU's faculty directory continues to list him as a Silver Professor of Mathematics, and NYU Shanghai lists him as an affiliated professor.