NSERC congratulates Dr. Jacob Tsimerman, professor of mathematics at the University of Toronto, on winning the 2026 Fields Medal, presented by the International Mathematical Union. This marks the first time the Fields Medal has been awarded to a researcher at a Canadian university.

Dr. Tsimerman was presented with the medal at the 2026 International Congress of Mathematicians, for his contribution in the recasting of o-minimality as a fundamental method of arithmetic and complex algebraic geometry, and his role in the proof of many central conjectures including Griffiths' conjecture on the algebraicity of images of the period maps, and the Andre-Oort conjecture for Siegel modular varieties. This award is a testament to the exceptional work accomplished by Dr. Tsimerman and its future promise in the field of mathematics.

The 2026 Fields Medal recipient first received NSERC funding in 2006 through an Undergraduate Student Research Award and later held a Postgraduate Scholarship at the master's level. More recently, NSERC is proud to have provided Discovery Grants support for Dr. Tsimerman's research in number theory and related fields for more than a decade, including recognizing him as a leader through a Discovery Accelerator Supplement.

The Fields Medal, considered the “Nobel Prize in Mathematics”, is awarded every four years and recognizes the outstanding mathematical achievement for existing work and for the promise of future achievement of two to four awardees under the age of 40. Dr. Tsimerman shares this year’s honours with Yu Deng of the University of Chicago, John Pardon of Stony Brook University and Hong Wang of New York University and the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques (IHES) of Université Paris-Saclay.