June Huh (full name: June E Huh, ; born 1983) is an Korean-American mathematician who is currently a professor at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the n ...

. Previously, he was a professor at Stanford University. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 2022 and a

MacArthur Fellowship The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to between 20 and 30 indi ...

in 2022. He has been noted for the linkages that he has found between algebraic geometry and

combinatorics Combinatorics is an area of mathematics primarily concerned with counting, both as a means and an end in obtaining results, and certain properties of finite structures. It is closely related to many other areas of mathematics and has many a ...

Early life and education

Huh was born in

Stanford, California Stanford is a census-designated place (CDP) in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States. It is the home of Stanford University. The population was 21,150 at the 2020 census. Stanford is an unincorporated area of ...

while his parents were completing graduate school at Stanford University. He was raised in

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and sharing a Korean Demilitarized Zone, land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed ...

, where his family returned when he was approximately two years old. His father was a professor of statistics at

Korea University Korea University (KU, ) is a private research university in Seoul, South Korea, established in 1905. The university is included as one of the SKY universities, a popular acronym referring to Korea's three most prestigious universities. T ...

, while his mother was a professor of Russian language at

Seoul National University Seoul National University (SNU; ) is a national public research university located in Seoul, South Korea. Founded in 1946, Seoul National University is largely considered the most prestigious university in South Korea; it is one of the thr ...

. Poor scores on elementary school tests convinced him that he was not very good at math. He dropped out of high school to focus on writing

poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek '' poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings ...

after becoming bored and exhausted by the routine of studying. Because of this, he has been described as a

late bloomer A late bloomer is a person whose talents or capabilities are not visible to others until later than usual. Late bloomer or Late bloomers may also refer to: * ''Late Bloomers'' (2006 film) (German: ''Die Herbstzeitlosen''), 2006 Swiss film direct ...

. Huh enrolled at

(SNU) in 2002, but was initially unsettled. He initially aimed to become a science journalist and decided to major in physics and astronomy, but compiled a poor attendance record and had to repeat several courses that he initially failed. Early in his studies he was mentored by Japanese Fields medalist mathematician

Heisuke Hironaka is a Japanese mathematician who was awarded the Fields Medal in 1970 for his contributions to algebraic geometry. Career Hironaka entered Kyoto University in 1949. After completing his undergraduate studies at Kyoto University, he received hi ...

, who went to SNU as a visiting professor. Having failed several courses, Huh took an algebraic geometry course under Hironaka in his sixth year which focused on

singularity theory In mathematics, singularity theory studies spaces that are almost manifolds, but not quite. A string can serve as an example of a one-dimensional manifold, if one neglects its thickness. A singularity can be made by balling it up, dropping it ...

and was based on Hironaka's current research rather than established teaching material. Huh credited the course with sparking his interest in research-level math. Huh then proceeded to complete a master's degree at Seoul National University, while frequently travelling to Japan with Hironaka and acting as his personal assistant. Due to his poor undergraduate record, Huh was rejected from all but one of the American universities that he applied to. He started his

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...

studies at the

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univers ...

in 2009, before transferring in 2011 to the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

, graduating in 2014 with a thesis written under the direction of

Mircea Mustață Mircea Immanuel Mustață (; born 1971 in Romania) is a Romanian-American mathematician, specializing in algebraic geometry. Mustață received from the University of Bucharest a bachelor's degree in 1995 and a master's degree in 1996 and from th ...

at the age of 31. He was awarded the Sumner Byron Myers Prize for his PhD thesis.

Career

In 2009, during his PhD studies, Huh proved

Read's conjecture Read's conjecture is a conjecture, first made by Ronald Read, about the unimodality of the coefficients of chromatic polynomials in the context of graph theory. In 1974, S. G. Hoggar tightened this to the conjecture that the coefficients must be ...

about the unimodality of the coefficients of

chromatic polynomial The chromatic polynomial is a graph polynomial studied in algebraic graph theory, a branch of mathematics. It counts the number of graph colorings as a function of the number of colors and was originally defined by George David Birkhoff to stu ...

s in the context of

graph theory In mathematics, graph theory is the study of '' graphs'', which are mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects. A graph in this context is made up of '' vertices'' (also called ''nodes'' or ''points'') which are conn ...

, which had been unresolved for more than 40 years. In joint work with

Karim Adiprasito Karim Alexander Adiprasito (born 1988) is a German mathematician working at the University of Copenhagen and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who works in combinatorics. He completed his Ph.D. in 2013 at Free University Berlin under the supe ...

and

Eric Katz Eric Katz is a mathematician working in combinatorial algebraic geometry and arithmetic geometry. He is currently an associate professor in the Department of Mathematics at Ohio State University. In joint work with Karim Adiprasito and June ...

, he resolved the Heron–Rota–Welsh conjecture on the log-concavity of the

characteristic polynomial of matroids In combinatorics, a branch of mathematics, a matroid is a structure that abstracts and generalizes the notion of linear independence in vector spaces. There are many equivalent ways to define a matroid axiomatically, the most significant being i ...

. With Karim Adiprasito, he is one of five winners of the 2019 New Horizons Prize for Early-Career Achievement in Mathematics, associated with the

Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics The Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics is an annual award of the Breakthrough Prize series announced in 2013. It is funded by Yuri Milner and Mark Zuckerberg and others. The annual award comes with a cash gift of $3 million. The Breakthrough Priz ...

. He was a winner of

Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists was established in 2007 through a partnership between the Blavatnik Family Foundation, headed by Leonard Blavatnik (Russian: Леонид Валентинович Блаватник), chairman of Access Indust ...

(U.S. Regional) in 2017. Huh was an invited speaker at the

International Congress of Mathematicians The International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) is the largest conference for the topic of mathematics. It meets once every four years, hosted by the International Mathematical Union (IMU). The Fields Medals, the Nevanlinna Prize (to be rename ...

in 2018 in

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the Rio de Janeiro (state), state of the same name, Brazil's List of Brazilian states by population, third-most populous state, and the List of largest citi ...

. In 2021, he received the Samsung

Ho-Am Prize in Science The Ho-Am Prize in Science was established in 1990 by Kun-Hee Lee, the Chairman of Samsung, to honour the late Chairman, Lee Byung-chul, the founder of the company. The Ho-Am Prize in Science (previously the Ho-Am Prize in Science & Technology) ...

for physics and mathematics. Huh was awarded the 2022 Fields Medal for "bringing the ideas of

Hodge theory In mathematics, Hodge theory, named after W. V. D. Hodge, is a method for studying the cohomology groups of a smooth manifold ''M'' using partial differential equations. The key observation is that, given a Riemannian metric on ''M'', every coh ...

to combinatorics, the proof of the Dowling–Wilson conjecture for geometric lattices, the proof of the Heron–Rota–Welsh conjecture for matroids, the development of the theory of Lorentzian polynomials, and the proof of the strong Mason conjecture". June Huh is the ninth Asian recipient of the prize and the first Korean recipient of the prize.

Personal life

Huh is married to Kim Nayoung, whom he met through his mathematical studies at Seoul National University. She graduated from Seoul National University with a doctorate in mathematics. They have two sons.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Huh, June 1983 births Living people 21st-century American mathematicians Algebraic geometers American academics of Korean descent American expatriates in South Korea Combinatorialists Fields Medalists Mathematicians from California MacArthur Fellows People from Stanford, California Princeton University faculty Recipients of the Ho-Am Prize in Science Seoul National University alumni Stanford University Department of Mathematics faculty University of Michigan alumni