Ukrainian becomes second woman to win Fields maths medal

Ukraine's Maryna Viazovska paid tribute to those suffering in her war-torn country as she became the second woman to be awarded the Fields medal, known as the Nobel prize for mathematics.

Viazovska, a 37-year-old Kyiv-born maths professor, received the prestigious award alongside three other winners at a ceremony in Helsinki.

"My life changed forever" when Moscow invaded Ukraine in February, she said in a video displayed at the ceremony, adding that her sisters had been evacuated from Kyiv.

"Right now Ukrainians are really paying the highest price for our beliefs and our freedom," she said.

The International Congress of Mathematicians, where the prize is awarded, was initially scheduled to be held in Russia's second city Saint Petersburg -- and opened by President Vladimir Putin.

Earlier in the year hundreds of mathematicians signed an open letter protesting the choice of the host city, and after Moscow invaded Ukraine in late February the event was moved to the Finnish capital.

The other Fields winners were France's Hugo Duminil-Copin of the University of Geneva, Britain's James Maynard of Oxford University and June Huh of Princeton in the United States.

The medal, along with $11,600, is awarded every four years to between two to four candidates under the age of 40 for "outstanding mathematical achievement".

Viazovska was born in 1984 in Ukraine, then still part of the Soviet Union, and has been a professor at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland since 2017.