On November 12, the 2023 Shaw Prize held an offline award ceremony at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the award. It is the first offline ceremony that the award has been held in three years. More than 30 previous winners of the Shaw Prize attended the ceremony, and 21 scientists who failed to reach Hong Kong in person from 2020 to 2022 came to receive the Medals.
Professor Reinhard Genzel, chairman of the Prize Committee, presented the 2023 Shaw Prize in Mathematical Science to Shing-Tung Yau, a professor at Tsinghua University. Among the many awards, the Shaw Prize has a special significance because it comes from his hometown and his Alma Mater.
Acceptance Speech Shing-Tung Yau
“I feel honored to win the Shaw Prize. The Shaw Prize Review Committee is composed of many outstanding mathematicians whom I respect, and thank them for their recognition of my work. I grew up in Hong Kong and knew Mr.Run Run Shaw and his wife.
Thanks to my father, because of his careful teaching, I want to become a scholar and set the ambition to make some contributions to the development of science. Thanks to my mother, who encouraged me to explore and realize my dream, even when my family encountered extreme poverty. My wife has given me the most support for the last 50 years. I am very proud of her for taking care of her family and raising her two lovely sons. Thank them, let me have a warm, good family.
I am very grateful to my teachers, Mr.Shiing-Shen Chern and Professor Murrey, for they laying a solid foundation for my geometry and analysis. Over the past 10 years, I have met the math masters Eugenio Calabi, Louis Nirenberg, and I.Singer, all of whom have been my teachers. I would like to thank my friends, Zheng Shaoyuan, Richard Schoen, Leon Simon, Karen Uhlenbeck, Richard Hamilton, Li Weiguang, Bill Meeks, Andy Strominger, Duong H. Phong, Li Jun, Liu Kefeng, Bong Lian, Liang Naicong, Wang Mudao, Liu Qiuju, Richard Thomas, Eric Zaslow, Valentino Tosatti, Po-Ning Chen, Adam Jacobs, Tristan Collins, and my brother Stephen Shing-Toung Yau, of course there are many more. Together, we pioneered the modern geometric analysis.
Most of my important work was done during my stay in the United States. China is my motherland. I hope that the cooperation between China and the United States, especially in the field of basic science, will continue continuously.
I wrote the lyrics of the song for the Qiuzhen College of Tsinghua University, the last sentence is: revitalize the civilization of the East and West, and write yourselves in the glory of history. I firmly believe that the Shaw Foundation will make an important contribution to connecting the East and the West and promoting scientific development."
Notes:
Directly translated from the Chinese version in Qiuzhen College Website
Original speech could be found in The Shaw Prize Website, https://www.shawprize.org/event/award-presentation-ceremony-2023/
Translation: Gao Xudong
