(LU JIAXING)

Shing-Tung Yau, a Chinese-American mathematician working in differential geometry, will share this year's Wolf Prize in Mathematics with Professor Dennis Sullivan at Stony Brook University, New York. Organizers said that Yau was being honored for his work in geometric analysis.

The annual Wolf Prize is an international award originating in Israel from 1978. It will be presented on May 13 this year.

Yau, 61, has been a professor at Harvard University since 1987. He is the second Chinese, following Shiing-Shen Chern in 1984, to win the Wolf Prize in Mathematics, one of the world's top honors recognizing life achievement.

In 1976, Yau proved the Calabi conjecture in differential geometry, which concerns volume and distance being measured not in four, but in five or more dimensions. Then in 1979, Yau and Richard Schoen proved Albert Einstein's positive mass conjecture by applying methods devised by Yau. Their proof provided an important tool for understanding how black holes form.

In 1982, Yau was awarded the Fields Medal, the highest award in mathematics.