We bid farewell to Heisuke Hironaka, an acclaimed Japanese mathematician, who passed away March 18, 2026, at the age of 94. Hironaka received the Fields Medal in 1970 “for his work in algebraic geometry, including the resolution of certain singularities and torus imbeddings with implications in the theory of analytic functions, and complex and Kähler manifolds.” 

He was a professor at Harvard University and the head of Kyoto University's Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences. From 1996 to 2002, he served as president of Yamaguchi University.

In 1992, Hironaka established the Sansu Olympics, a math competition for children.

Of his love for mathematics, Hironaka once said: “I accumulate anything to do with numbers. For instance, I have more than 10,000 photos of flowers and leaves. I like to just count the numbers and compare them. I am so pleased to be a mathematician, because I can see the mathematical interest in things.”

more