Professor recognized with prestigious award for mathematical excellence
Zilin Jiang. Courtesy photo
Zilin Jiang, assistant professor jointly in the School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences and the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence, and a team of researchers at MIT were recently awarded the highly prestigious 2024 Delbert Ray Fulkerson Prize, which recognizes outstanding papers in discrete mathematics.
Their winning paper, “Equiangular lines with a fixed angle,” describes a solution to a problem in equiangular lines — a problem that is easy to state yet had resisted many years of effort to resolve.
“On the face of it, the problem appears as a straightforward question in discrete geometry, but solving it requires innovative approaches in graph theory,” Jiang said. “I am always fascinated by problems with such dual features in discrete geometry, where a simple statement hides deep and complex challenges.”
The paper was published in Annals of Mathematics in 2021. The prize was presented on July 22 at the 25th International Symposium on Mathematical Programming, held in Montreal.
“The feeling of receiving this award is very different from getting a prize after a competition, where the feedback loop is short," Jiang said. "In contrast, this award recognizes my work from three years ago, which makes the acknowledgment even more profound. Upon receiving the news, I immediately felt a validation of all the hard work and perseverance I have dedicated to my research. This award represents a significant milestone, reflecting the long and challenging journey I have undertaken in the field of discrete geometry and graph theory."
The American Mathematical Society, the world's largest mathematics community, awards the triennial Fulkerson Prize together with the Mathematical Optimization Society, and wrote the following about the team’s solution:
“The authors solve a combinatorial geometry problem that has received considerable attention since the 1960s: Determine the maximum number of lines in d-dimensional space such that the angle between every pair is exactly θ. For fixed θ and large d, the authors provide a sharp bound. The proofs combine combinatorial ideas with tools from spectral graph theory in a clever, original and elegant way.”
Jiang’s collaborators are MIT Associate Professor Yufei Zhao, along with graduate student Jonathan Tidor and undergraduates Yuan Yao and Shengtong Zhang, who were students at MIT while working on the winning paper.
“The Fulkerson Prize is awarded only every three years, and it’s a tremendous honor for Zilin to receive this recognition,” said Donatella Danielli, director and Foundation Professor in the School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences. “He works across an impressive range of topics within discrete geometry, extremal graph theory and topological combinatorics, and does superb work as evidenced by his winning this prestigious award.”
Reflecting on his journey, Jiang said, "I am particularly reminded of my advisor, Boris Bukh, who first introduced me to the problem when I was still a graduate student. His guidance and exceptional mathematical taste were pivotal in shaping my research direction. I also feel extremely fortunate to have been in the right places at the right times, collaborating with some of the brightest minds in the field.
“Moving forward, I plan to delve deeper into these types of problems, learning more about them, and exploring their intricacies. My goal is to see what new insights and solutions I can contribute, allowing mathematics to take me on another exciting journey of discovery and innovation.”
About the Delbert Ray Fulkerson Prize
A pioneer in modern operations research, Delbert Ray Fulkerson (1924–76) made fundamental contributions to network flow theory and combinatorial analysis. The AMS-MOS Fulkerson Prize was established in his honor after his death to encourage mathematical excellence in discrete mathematics, including graph theory, networks, mathematical programming, applied combinatorics, applications of discrete mathematics to computer science and related subjects. The triennial prize currently is funded by an endowment administered by the Mathematical Optimization Society.
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