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June Huh

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June Huh
Huh at the 2018 International Congress of Mathematicians
Born (1983-06-09) June 9, 1983 (age 41)
Stanford, California, U.S
Alma mater
Known forResolution of the Heron-Rota-Welsh conjecture with algebraic geometrical method
SpouseNayoung Kim[1]
Children2
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
Institutions
ThesisRota's conjecture and positivity of algebraic cycles in permutohedral varieties (2014)
Doctoral advisorMircea Mustață
Korean name
Hangul
허준이
Hanja
許埈珥
Revised RomanizationHeo Jun-i
McCune–ReischauerHŏ Chuni
IPA[hʌ̹ t̟͡ɕun i]

June E Huh (Korean: 허준이; born June 9, 1983) is an American mathematician who is currently a professor at Princeton University. Previously, he was a professor at Stanford University.[2][3] He was awarded the Fields Medal[4] and a MacArthur Fellowship in 2022. He has been noted for the linkages that he has found between algebraic geometry and combinatorics.[5]

Early life and education

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Huh was born in Stanford, California while his parents were completing graduate school at Stanford University. He was raised in South Korea, where his family returned when he was approximately two years old. His father was a professor of statistics at Korea University, while his mother was a professor of Russian language at Seoul National University.[1][6] Poor scores on elementary school tests convinced him that he lacked the innate aptitude to excel in mathematics. He later dropped out of high school to focus on writing poetry after becoming bored and exhausted by the constant routine of relentless studying.[6] Huh has been described as a late bloomer, both in terms of his career phenomena and with regards to his academic and professional development.[7] Huh matriculated at Seoul National University in 2002, but found himself initially unsettled. He pinned his initial career aspirations on becoming 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 at.[6]

Early in his studies he was mentored by Japanese award-winning mathematician Heisuke Hironaka, who went to Seoul National University as a visiting professor.[1] Having failed several courses, Huh took an algebraic geometry course under Hironaka in his sixth year which focused on singularity theory 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.[6] 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.[6] Due to his poor academic record as an undergraduate, Huh was rejected from all but one of the American universities that he applied to. He started his Ph.D. studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2009, before transferring to the University of Michigan in 2011.[6] He graduated in 2014 with a thesis written under the direction of Mircea Mustață at the age of 31.[8] He was awarded the Sumner Byron Myers Prize for his PhD thesis.[9]

Career

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In 2009, during his PhD studies, Huh proved Read's conjecture about the unimodality of the coefficients of chromatic polynomials in graph theory, which had been unresolved for more than 40 years.[6][10] In joint work with Karim Adiprasito and Eric Katz, he resolved the Heron–Rota–Welsh conjecture on the log-concavity of the characteristic polynomial of matroids.[11][1]

With Karim Adiprasito, he is one of five winners of the 2019 New Horizons in Mathematics Prize, associated with the Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics.[12] He was a winner of Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists (U.S. Regional) in 2017.[13] In 2018, Huh was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Rio de Janeiro. In 2021, he received the Samsung Ho-Am Prize in Science for physics and mathematics.[14]

Huh was awarded the 2022 Fields Medal for "bringing the ideas of Hodge theory 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".[15] Huh is the seventh recipient of East Asian ancestry and the first winner of Korean ancestry to have the prize bestowed upon him.[16]

Personal life

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Huh is married to Kim Nayoung, whom he met during his studies while attending Seoul National University. Kim is a graduate of Seoul National University where she earned her doctorate in mathematics. The couple has two sons.[6]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d Hartnett, Kevin (June 27, 2017). "A Path Less Taken to the Peak of the Math World". Quanta Magazine. Archived from the original on May 3, 2018. Retrieved October 16, 2021.
  2. ^ "June Huh's Home Page". Archived from the original on July 9, 2021. Retrieved July 7, 2021.
  3. ^ "June Huh". Institute for Advanced Study. Archived from the original on August 7, 2019. Retrieved August 7, 2019.
  4. ^ Chang, Kenneth (July 5, 2022). "Fields Medals in Mathematics Won by Four Under Age 40". The New York Times. Archived from the original on July 5, 2022. Retrieved July 5, 2022.
  5. ^ Kalai, Gil (July 2022). "The Work of June Huh" (PDF). Proceedings of the International Congress of Mathematicians 2022: 1–16. Archived (PDF) from the original on July 5, 2022. Retrieved July 5, 2022.
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h "He Dropped Out to Become a Poet. Now He's Won a Fields Medal". Quanta Magazine. July 5, 2022. Archived from the original on July 5, 2022. Retrieved July 5, 2022.
  7. ^ "Late-blooming mathematician busts the child prodigy myth". Australian Financial Review. November 1, 2019. Archived from the original on October 16, 2021. Retrieved October 16, 2021.
  8. ^ June Huh at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  9. ^ "Department Awards". LSA Mathematics. University of Michigan. Retrieved August 29, 2022.
  10. ^ Kalai, pp. 2–4.
  11. ^ "Combinatorics and more". August 14, 2015. Archived from the original on July 12, 2017. Retrieved July 1, 2017.
  12. ^ Dunne, Edward (October 20, 2018). "Break on Through". Beyond Reviews: Inside MathSciNet. American Mathematical Society. Archived from the original on November 9, 2020. Retrieved October 18, 2018.
  13. ^ "June Huh". Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists. June 27, 2017. Archived from the original on April 22, 2022. Retrieved July 5, 2022.
  14. ^ "June Huh becomes 1st scholar of Korean descent to win Fields Medal". The Korea Times. July 5, 2022. Archived from the original on July 5, 2022. Retrieved July 5, 2022.
  15. ^ "Fields medal short citation" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on July 5, 2022. Retrieved July 5, 2022.
  16. ^ "허준이 교수, 한국 수학자 최초 필즈상 수상 쾌거(종합2보)". The Science Times (in Korean). July 6, 2022. Retrieved July 30, 2022.
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