1948-

Chinese mathematician who was awarded a Fields Medal in 1982 for advancing the study of partial differential equations, the positive mass conjecture of general relativity, the Calabi conjecture, and Monge-Ampère equations. Yau, along with others, has studied the stability and construction of minimal surfaces with the goal of developing methods to analyze their behavior in the space-time of general relativity. Yau's work has provided insight into the formation of black holes.