Horng-Tzer Yau

Horng-Tzer Yau (; born June 29, 1959) is a Taiwanese-American mathematician who is the Merton Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University.

Early life and education Yau was born in 1959 in Taiwan, where he began studying advanced calculus and college algebra in high school. He graduated from National Taiwan University with a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in 1981. As an undergraduate, he studied differential geometry, real analysis, and complex analysis. After graduation, he served two years of military service in the Republic of China Armed Forces from 1981 to 1983.

In 1987, Yau earned his Ph.D. in mathematics from Princeton University. His doctoral dissertation, completed under mathematical physicist Elliott Lieb, was titled, "Stability of Coulomb Systems". After receiving his doctorate, Yao completed postdoctoral research at the Institute for Advanced Study under David Brydges from 1987 to 1988.

According to William C. Kirby, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard, "Professor Yau is a leader in the fields of mathematical physics... who has introduced important tools and concepts to study probability, stochastic processes, nonequilibrium statistical physics, and quantum dynamics."

Yau is a 2000 MacArthur Fellow.

Honors Simons Investigator Award Sloan Foundation Fellowship Packard Foundation Fellowship, 1991 International Congress of Mathematicians, 1998 Henri Poincaré Prize, 2000 MacArthur Fellowship, 2000 Morningside Gold Medal of Mathematics, 2001 Academician of the Academia Sinica, 2002 Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Member of the National Academy of Sciences Fellow of the American Mathematical Society, 2012 Simons Investigator, 2012 Editor-in-Chief of Communications in Mathematical Physics Eisenbud Prize for Mathematics & Physics, 2017 Leroy P. Steele Prize for Seminal Contribution to Research of the AMS, 2026