# 2026 Fields Medal Winner List Leaked via Codex-Scraped ICM Website — Full Investigation ## What Happened On **July 14, 2026** — 9 days before the official July 23 ceremony at ICM 2026 in Philadelphia — the Fields Medal winner list was accidentally leaked. Someone discovered that the **ICM 2026 official schedule website** had an `eventSnapshot` API endpoint that returned **all** data items to the frontend, including entries marked as `"HIDDEN"` with `showOnAgenda: false`. A **single curl command generated by OpenAI Codex** could scrape everything. The four names were found in the raw JSON, fully readable. The leaked data included not just the Fields Medalists but also the **Abacus Medal** (Shayan Oveis Gharan), **Chern Medal** (Graeme Segal), and **Gauss Prize** (Yurii Nesterov) winners. The ICM website briefly went offline after the leak was publicized; the hidden entries were removed, but screenshots and cached data had already been preserved. --- ## The Four Alleged 2026 Fields Medalists | Name | Institution | Peking Univ. Alumnus? | Key Breakthrough | |------|------------|----------------------|------------------| | **Hong Wang (王虹)** | IHES (France) / NYU | ✅ Yes (2007 cohort) | Solved the **3D Kakeya Conjecture** (with Joshua Zahl, 2025) — a 100+ year-old problem in harmonic analysis | | **Yu Deng (邓煜)** | University of Chicago | ✅ Yes (2007 cohort) | Solved the **narrow Hilbert's Sixth Problem** (with Xiao Ma & Zaher Hani) — rigorously deriving Boltzmann's equation from microscopic particle dynamics | | **John Pardon** | (TBD) | No | (Details pending official confirmation) | | **Jacob Tsimerman** | University of Toronto | No | (Details pending official confirmation) | --- ## Why It Matters — Historic Significance ### 1. First Time Two Chinese Mathematicians Win in the Same Edition This is the **first time in Fields Medal history** that two Chinese mathematicians will win simultaneously. Previously, ethnic Chinese winners were: - **Shing-Tung Yau** (1982) — born in Shantou, grew up in Hong Kong, UG at CUHK - **Terence Tao** (2006) — born/bred in Australia, UG at Flinders **Hong Wang and Yu Deng are the first Chinese winners who completed undergraduate education in mainland China** (both at Peking University). ### 2. Hong Wang = 3rd Female Fields Medalist Ever Only **two women** have won before: **Maryam Mirzakhani** (2014) and **Maryna Viazovska** (2022). Hong Wang would be the **third**, and the **first from China**. ### 3. Only 2nd Pair of Undergraduate Classmates to Win in Same Year The only other same-year undergraduate classmates to both win the Fields Medal were **Jean-Michel Lions and Jean-Christophe Yoccoz** (both 1994, École Normale Supérieure). Hong Wang and Yu Deng were both in the **2007 entering class at Peking University** — they overlapped for two years before Deng transferred to MIT. ### 4. China Becomes the 5th Country with Two Homegrown Winners in One Edition Previously only the USA (twice), France, UK, and Russia achieved this — all permanent UN Security Council members. ### 5. Prediction Markets Spiked to 98%+ On Polymarket, the probability for each of the four winners surged to **over 98%** within hours of the leak. ### 6. Contrasting Paths to Glory The two Peking University alumni took remarkably different routes: - **Hong Wang**: Regular Gaokao (653/750), no math competition background, entered Peking University's School of Earth and Space Sciences, switched to math after one year, then studied in France (École Polytechnique, Paris-Sud), PhD at MIT under Larry Guth. Now tenured professor at IHES (whose 12 previous math professors include 7 Fields Medalists). - **Yu Deng**: IMO Gold Medalist (2006, China team), Putnam Fellow (2010), competition elite path, transferred from PKU to MIT, PhD at Princeton under Alexandru Ionescu. Now professor at University of Chicago. --- ## Strongest Sources (Citing Provenance) 1. **IFeng.com (Phoenix News)** — Most detailed coverage. Chinese-language article titled "数学界的诺贝尔奖名单提前泄露" published July 14, 2026. Contains the full technical explanation of the API leak, both mathematicians' biographies, and the historical context. [https://i.ifeng.com/c/8ukvD1eipXR](https://i.ifeng.com/c/8ukvD1eipXR) 2. **PANews (English)** — Earliest English-language confirmation. Names the leak mechanism ("Codex-generated curl command"), the four winners, and the other leaked prizes. [https://panews.io/articles/019f5e7a-144b-728f-847e-2bb145b077fd](https://panews.io/articles/019f5e7a-144b-728f-847e-2bb145b077fd) 3. **Phemex News** — Republished PANews report with same details. [https://phemex.com/news/article/2026-fields-medal-winners-list-leaked-includes-two-peking-university-alumni-92948](https://phemex.com/news/article/2026-fields-medal-winners-list-leaked-includes-two-peking-university-alumni-92948) 4. **Simons Foundation** — Official media invitation for ICM 2026, confirming the ceremony date (July 23, 2026) and venue (Philadelphia). [https://www.simonsfoundation.org/2026/06/02/media-invitation-fields-medals-and-cutting-edge-math-at-icm-2026-in-philadelphia/](https://www.simonsfoundation.org/2026/06/02/media-invitation-fields-medals-and-cutting-edge-math-at-icm-2026-in-philadelphia/) 5. **Hacker News** — Discussion thread linking to the original Zhihu post. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48902814](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48902814) 6. **Polymarket** — Prediction market showing 98%+ probability for all four named winners (rapid spike after the leak). 7. **Zhihu (Chinese Q&A platform)** — Original source of the leak discovery (blocked to external access, but confirmed by multiple downstream reports). --- ## Bottom Line If confirmed on July 23, this is arguably the **most consequential Fields Medal year since 2014** (Mirzakhani's win). The leak itself is notable for the technical mechanism — a **frontend API that returned unfiltered data** — and the fact that **Codex** (OpenAI's code generation tool) was used to produce the scraping command. The story has already been called "the biggest leak in mathematics prize history" and has sparked intense debate about web security for academic conferences. Official confirmation is expected in 9 days.