After more than a decade at the University of Chicago, acclaimed mathematician Professor Ngo Bao Chau is heading back to Asia. Starting this June, he will begin teaching at the University of Hong Kong, the top-ranked institution in 2026 QS Asia University Rankings.

For Chau, the decision has been taking shape for over a year. The move brings him closer to his aging parents and fulfills his deep-seated wish to nurture the next generation of mathematical talent in his native Vietnam.

Chau's legacy is firmly cemented in the mathematical world. He is the only Vietnamese scholar to win the Fields Medal, the discipline's equivalent of the Nobel Prize, which he received in 2010 for his groundbreaking proof of the Fundamental Lemma of the Langlands Program.

Born in 1972, Chau's extraordinary trajectory began in Hanoi at the High School for Gifted Students in Natural Sciences. He quickly made his mark by becoming the first Vietnamese student to secure dual gold medals at the International Mathematical Olympiad in the late 1980s.

His academic journey then took him to France on a government scholarship in 1990, where he studied at Pierre and Marie Curie University and earned his PhD from Paris-Sud University at age 25.

By 2004, he had become Vietnam's youngest professor, and he has guided the Vietnam Institute for Advanced Study in Mathematics as its scientific director since 2010.

2. Vu Ha Van

The University of Hong Kong welcomed another brilliant Vietnamese mind to its mathematics department this past January: Professor Vu Ha Van.

Professor Van has built a formidable reputation by solving complex mathematical puzzles that had stumped researchers for decades. His groundbreaking work includes unlocking number theory's Erdős–Folkman problem and random graph theory's Shamir conjecture.

In a landmark partnership with 2006 Fields Medalist Terence Tao, he proved the circular law conjecture and the four-moment theorem. Together, these proofs stand as vital, historic breakthroughs in random matrix theory.

The global mathematical community has heavily recognized his contributions over the years. His honors include the 2008 George Pólya Prize from the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, as well as the 2012 Delbert Ray Fulkerson Prize, awarded jointly by the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Optimization Society.

A Hanoi native born in 1970, his academic roots trace back to Chu Van An High School and Hanoi-Amsterdam High School for the Gifted. He ultimately earned his PhD from Yale University in 1998, returning to the university as a professor in 2011 before charting his new course in Hong Kong.

3. Joshua Zahl

At 40 years old, acclaimed mathematician Joshua Zahl made a major career transition last June, leaving the University of British Columbia to become a full-time chaired professor at the Chern Institute of Mathematics at China's Nankai University.

Zahl's profile skyrocketed within the global mathematics community following a historic breakthrough. Alongside collaborator Wang Hong, widely viewed as a frontrunner for the 2026 Fields Medal, Zahl successfully solved the century-old Kakeya conjecture in three-dimensional space.

His highly respected body of work extends far beyond that single conjecture. He has consistently driven progress across several complex fields, such as discrete mathematics, Fourier analysis, and geometric measure theory.

Zahl built his impressive academic resume on the West Coast of the United States, completing his undergraduate degree at the California Institute of Technology before earning his PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2013.

(From L) Professors Joshua Zahl, Ngo Bao Chau and Vu Ha Van. Photos courtesy of the University of British Columbia, Hong Kong University and VinUniversity

4. Yitang Zhang

Sun Yat-sen University announced in June 2025 that it had recruited mathematician Yitang Zhang from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Zhang's name is permanently etched in mathematical history thanks to his 2013 breakthrough. He stunned the academic world by proving the existence of infinitely many prime number pairs with a bounded gap, bringing the elusive twin prime conjecture much closer to a resolution.

His path to greatness was anything but traditional. Born in Shanghai in 1955, his early mathematical brilliance was stalled by the Cultural Revolution, which entirely prevented him from attending high school.

Undeterred, Zhang simply taught himself. He successfully secured a spot at Peking University in 1978 and continued his extraordinary academic journey at Purdue University, where he earned his doctorate in 1991.

5. Liu Jun

Life came full circle for 63-year-old Liu Jun in September 2025 when he confirmed he would begin teaching at Tsinghua University, the exact campus where he grew up.

His return follows a distinguished, decades-long career in the United States. After his undergraduate studies at Peking University, Liu earned his doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1991.

He subsequently spent more than 30 years as a fixture at Harvard University. His groundbreaking research has earned him esteemed spots in the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the American Statistical Association.

Liu's legacy is largely defined by his pioneering advancements in Bayesian inference, computational biology, and bioinformatics.

Beyond his own discoveries, he has profoundly shaped the next generation of scholars. Having supervised over 40 PhD students and 30 postdoctoral researchers, his academic descendants can now be found shaping the future at elite universities, on Wall Street, and at tech titans like Google and Microsoft.

6. Daqing Wan

At 62 years old, renowned mathematician Daqing Wan is closing a major chapter of his career in the United States. He recently confirmed his retirement from the University of California, Irvine, charting a new course to work at Chongqing University in China.

Wan's name carries immense weight across the global mathematics community. He is celebrated for solving several highly complex puzzles in modern number theory, with his crowning achievement being the proof of the long-standing Dwork conjecture.

This 1973 problem had challenged scholars for decades until Wan's breakthrough, which ultimately laid a vital foundation for understanding the mysterious behavior of prime numbers. This extraordinary work earned him the 2001 Morningside Medal, the most prestigious accolade in Chinese mathematics.

His brilliant trajectory began in his youth. A true mathematical prodigy, Wan gained admission to the Chengdu University of Technology's mathematics department at the astonishing age of 14.

He subsequently took his talents across the Pacific, securing his PhD from the University of Washington in 1991 and dedicating over three decades to American academia before embarking on this new journey.

7. Wu Meng

In August of last year, acclaimed mathematician Wu Meng embarked on a new chapter at Hunan University. According to the university's website, he has officially joined the mathematics department as a full-time professor of pure mathematics.

This transition follows a successful tenure in Finland, where he taught at the University of Oulu, one of the nation's largest and most prominent academic institutions.

Wu's name became globally recognized within the mathematics community in 2019. He stunned researchers by solving a half-century-old problem tied to the Furstenberg conjecture, which explores the fascinating structural changes of numbers when represented in different bases.

His foundational academic years were spent entirely in France. He attended the Université de Picardie Jules Verne, securing his bachelor's degree in 2006 and ultimately earning his doctorate from the university in 2013.

8. Li Hanfeng

Following Daqing Wan's example, Professor Li Hanfeng has departed his role at the University at Buffalo in the United States to join Chongqing University.

Li is a highly respected figure in functional analysis, operator algebras, noncommutative geometry, dynamical systems, and additive number theory.

He holds a rare distinction within the global mathematics community, having published papers in all four of the discipline's most prestigious journals: Annals of Mathematics, Inventiones Mathematicae, Journal of the American Mathematical Society, and Acta Mathematica.

His academic journey began at Peking University, where he earned his bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1997. He later crossed the Pacific, completing his PhD at the University of California, Berkeley in 2002.

Li's relocation highlights China's ongoing efforts to draw elite scientists and researchers back from overseas. A driving force behind this migration is the "Thousand Talents" program, which actively recruits top global talent through favorable visa policies and substantial financial incentives.