China has problems to solve before its mathematics research can rise above WWII levels, scholar says

Celebrated mathematician Yau Shing-Tung says country’s mathematics research not yet at level of the US in the 1940s
Older, more conservative scholars are out of touch with latest research trends, leading younger talent to fall behind global leaders

Science

Ling Xinin Ohio

Published: 6:32pm, 8 May 2024

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The numbers do not look good for China’s current level of mathematics research, according to a leading Chinese-American mathematician, who says the country is decades behind the United States and must overhaul its evaluation system if it wants to catch up.

“There is no doubt that China will become a scientific and technological powerhouse,” Yau Shing-Tung, one of the world’s most influential mathematicians, told students and researchers at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan last week, but he added that the country’s level of maths research had not yet reached the level of the US in the 1940s.

“For any powerful modernised country, its achievements in maths must be at the forefront,” the geometry expert said during a talk on the status and future of Chinese mathematics on April 30.

With an understanding that mathematics was the foundation of all modern sciences and technologies, Yau said the US began sending students to Europe to study the subject in 1880.

Within three decades, Americans started to make breakthroughs in maths under the leadership of George Birkhoff, one of the top mathematicians of his generation. The country also took advantage of the two world wars to absorb a large number of European mathematicians, Yau said.

By the 1960s, the US had become the world leader in mathematics research. “Currently, China’s mathematics has not reached their level in the 1940s,” he said.

Last year’s International Congress of Basic Science held in Beijing illustrated the gap. At the event, top experts were asked to select the 85 “best papers” that had been published by mathematicians over the previous five years – only six were from China, Yau said.

In contrast, more than 70 of the best papers were written by US professors.

The Chinese mathematical community was not fully aware of its place on the global stage, Yau said, but understanding that would be crucial if those researchers were to one day stand on equal footing with international counterparts.

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Yau, who retired from Harvard University in 2022 to teach full-time at Tsinghua University and help China become a powerhouse in the field, blamed the lag on the country’s existing academic evaluation system.

“The assessment of prizes and promotions largely relies on domestic scholars rather than international experts. Those scholars are often older, more conservative, and not following the latest developments in the field closely enough,” he said.

As a result, younger scholars would tend to hold on to conventional thinking and gradually fall out of step with the global leaders in research, he said.

China’s system of generous rewards for scientists also had major drawbacks, Yau said. Over the past 10 years, if a young researcher in China won titles such as an “outstanding talent”, their salaries and allowances were to increase to levels exceeding those of most American professors, he said.

Tsinghua University’s Yau Shing-Tung says China’s current academic evaluations incentivise younger scholars for wrong reasons. Photo: Jonathan Wong

The approach “places too much emphasis on material rewards” and tends to encourage young researchers to work for titles instead of scientific advancements, he said.

Instead, Yau suggested “encouraging a small group of students to become world-class scholars, do breakthrough work, lead the academic community, and influence the development of maths over the next few decades”.

Yau is best known for his groundbreaking contributions to differential geometry, which helped solve the equation behind string theory, which is also known as the theory of everything. He was 33 when he became the first Chinese to win the Fields Medal, the mathematics equivalent of the Nobel Prize.

He is the only person to have won six top prizes in the field of mathematics, which also include the MacArthur Award, Crafoord Award, Wolf Award, Marcel Grossmann Award, and the Shaw Prize.