Riemann Prize Laureate 2025: Sylvia Serfaty

Sylvia Serfaty, Professeur at Sorbonne Université, Laboratoire Jacques-Louis Lions and Silver Professor of Mathematics at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University, has been announced as the recipient of the Riemann Prize 2025 in Mathematics, awarded by the Riemann International School of Mathematics (RISM).

Sylvia Serfaty (Boulogne-Billancourt, November 6th, 1975), a world renowned French mathematician and academic, known for her numerous contributions to mathematical physics, calculus of variations, and random matrix theory, including her rigorous analyses of Ginzburg-Landau vortex dynamics, Coulomb and logarithmic gases, and beta ensembles, as well as her influential texts on these subjects. She has received several distinctions, including: Henri Poincaré Prize (2012), Grand Prix Mergier-Bourdeix de l'Académie des Sciences de Paris (2013), and the Maryam Mirzakhani Prize (2024). She is a member of the European Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The Riemann International School of Mathematics (RISM) was founded in 2009 and became a non-profit association in 2014. Its goal is to promote fundamental mathematical research and education through international congresses, workshops, PhD courses and school activities, and recently also public outreach. RISM is located at Villa Toeplitz in Varese within the prestigious premises of the Università degli Studi dell’Insubria, in Northern Italy near the Swiss border.

Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866) was one of the greatest mathematicians of all time. His legacy spans modern mathematics: Riemann sums and integrals, the Riemann zeta function and hypothesis, Riemannian geometry, Riemann surfaces, and the Riemann sphere. Two generations later, his work became a crucial tool in Einstein’s theory of general relativity. He lived and worked mostly in Göttingen, but later traveled to Italy, particularly in the Insubria region, where he is buried.

The Riemann Prize was established in 2019, on the tenth anniversary of RISM. Along with RISM and the University of Insubria, the prize is under the patronage of all public and private universities of Lombardy, the Istituto Lombardo – Accademia di Scienze e Lettere, and co-sponsored by the University of Milan, University of Milan-Bicocca, the Regione Lombardia, the Municipality of Varese, and more recently by INdAM – Istituto Nazionale di Alta Matematica. It is awarded every three years by an international committee (currently: Martin Hairer, EPFL & Imperial College London; Terence Tao, UCLA; Daniele Cassani, President of RISM – Università degli Studi dell’Insubria) to outstanding mathematicians aged 40–65 who have reached breakthrough achievements, as a tribute to Bernhard Riemann. The Riemann Prize has previously been awarded to Terence Tao (2019) and Luigi Ambrosio (2022).

The prize will be formally awarded to Sylvia Serfaty during the Riemann Prize Week (June 29th – July 3rd, 2026) at the Università degli Studi dell’Insubria in Varese. The ceremony will conclude a week of events celebrating the laureate, including research conferences and appointments open to the public — a true mathematics festival. The prize includes a piece of art by Master Marcello Morandini and a 100g pure gold medal, the Riemann Medal.