British mathematician awarded prestigious Fields Medal

James Maynard (Lehtikuva via AP)

British academic James Maynard and Ukrainian expert Maryna Viazovska have been named as two of the four recipients of the prestigious Fields Medal – often described as the Nobel Prize in mathematics.

The International Mathematical Union said Ms Viazovska, who holds the chair in number theory at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, was honoured for her work on the densest packing of identical spheres in eight dimensions.