Respected mathematician Kenji Fukaya leaves US to teach at China’s Tsinghua University

In a video, Fukaya said Chinese students reminded him of Japanese students’ strong focus and dedication to studying mathematics

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Kenji Fukaya, a Japanese mathematician “with global influence”, has been appointed a full-time professor at Tsinghua University’s Yau Mathematical Sciences Centre. Photo: Tsinghua University

Published: 4:00pm, 19 Sep 2024Updated: 1:17am, 20 Sep 2024

Award-winning Japanese mathematician Kenji Fukaya has left Stony Brook University in the US to join China’s Tsinghua University as a full-time professor.

Fukaya, previously a permanent member of the Simons Centre for Geometry and Physics at Stony Brook, delivered his first lecture at Tsinghua on September 11, according to the university’s Yau Mathematical Sciences Centre.

His open course on symplectic geometry – which studies spaces where objects such as planets and particles move and interact – drew a large audience of students and teachers, the centre reported on its official WeChat account.

Kenji Fukaya became a permanent member of the Simons Centre on April 1, 2013. Photo: Stony Brook University

In a video shared by the centre, Fukaya said Chinese students reminded him of Japanese students from his youth because both showed strong focus and dedication to studying mathematics.

He expressed hope that as more researchers born in China returned to teach there, a community of highly skilled, domestically educated mathematicians would continue to grow.

Fukaya is affiliated with both the Yau Mathematical Sciences Centre and the Beijing Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Applications, institutions founded at Tsinghua by Chinese-American mathematician Shing-Tung Yau.

He is widely recognised as a mathematician with global influence, according to the centre. His early research focused on Riemannian geometry, where he studied how shapes behave when they collapse or shrink.