Photo: VOA / Public domain (source: Wikimedia Commons)
My Take
Yitang Zhang is the closest thing pure math has to a folk hero, and I find his story genuinely moving. Working as a relatively obscure lecturer at the University of New Hampshire, he quietly produced a breakthrough on bounded gaps between primes that stunned the field in 2013. The cascade of honors that followed, the Cole Prize, Ostrowski, the Schock, a MacArthur, all came late and feel earned rather than hyped. What I take from him is patience: that someone outside the spotlight can solve a problem the experts couldn't crack. That's the kind of quiet persistence I admire far more than overnight success.
Overview
Yitang Zhang (Chinese: 张益唐; born February 5, 1955) is a Chinese-American mathematician primarily working on number theory and a professor of mathematics at Sun Yat-sen University. Previously working at the University of New Hampshire as a lecturer, Zhang submitted a paper to the Annals of Mathematics in 2013 which established the first finite bound on the least gap between consecutive primes that is attained infinite…
Summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1. Profile
- Name (English)
- Yitang Zhang
- Name (Japanese)
- 張益唐
- Reading
- ちょう・えきとう
- Born
- January 1, 1955 (age 71)
- Zodiac / Chinese zodiac
- Capricorn / Goat
- Origin
- Pinghu, People's Republic of China
- Blood type
- Private
- Height
- Private
- Agency
- Private
- Occupation
- mathematician
2. Background
- Elementary school
- Private
- Junior high
- Private
- High school
- Tsinghua University High School
- University
- Peking University
Awards & achievements
- 2014 Cole Prize in Number Theory
- 2013 Ostrowski Prize
- 2014 Rolf Schock Prize in Mathematics
- 2014 MacArthur Fellows Program
3. Relationships
- Spouse
- Private
- Children
- Private
- Parents
- Private
- Siblings
- Private
4. Personality
Motto
Private
6. Links
- Official sitehttps://www.math.ucsb.edu/people/yitang-tom-zhang
- Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%BC%B5%E7%9B%8A%E5%94%90
Mathematician — see all → · More people from People's Republic of China →
7. About this entry
Tags
- Last updated
- 2026-06-02
Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public items are marked "Private / Unknown". English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.