This year marks the 105th anniversary of Nankai University. On August 21, Yiming Zhang, an alumnus of Nankai University and the founder of ByteDance, and Rubo Liang, an alumnus of Nankai University and CEO of ByteDance, jointly donated 200 million yuan to support Nankai University's mathematical research and talent cultivation.

The NKU's mathematics discipline was developed from the Department of Mathematics founded by Professor Lifu Jiang in 1920, which was the second-ever mathematics department in the history of modern China. After generations of hard work, especially since the foundation of Nankai Institute of Mathematics (now Chern Institute of Mathematics) in 1985 by Professor Shiing-Shen Chern, Nankai people has built the NKU's mathematics discipline into a mathematical research and cultivation base with a wide range of majors and fully reinforced research teams.

The NKU's mathematics discipline has made a major breakthrough in the fifth round of China Discipline Ranking, becoming a top-tier mathematics discipline in China. In recent five years, the TWAS Award in Mathematics was achieved twice by Nankai scholars. Since the establishment of the Award, there have been eight Chinese winners who are mathematicians from Chinese mainland, four of them are from Nankai University. In 2022, Professor Weiping Zhang was chosen as a member of the Fields Medal Committee at the 29th International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM), making him the first-ever mathematician from Chinese mainland among the Fields Medal Committee members. Professor Yiming Long was a member of the Program Committee of the 29th ICM, which was in charge of selecting the speakers of that year. Being selected as a speaker at the ICM is considered to be the highest distinctions in the mathematical world.  

The donation will provide strong support for the future development of NKU's mathematical research and talent cultivation.

(Resource: NKU News; translated by CIM)