Fields-Winning Mathematician Heisuke Hironaka Dies at 94

Kyoto, March 19 (Jiji Press)--Kyoto University professor emeritus Heisuke Hironaka, an acclaimed Japanese mathematician who won the Fields Medal in 1970, died on Wednesday. He was 94.

Born in Yamaguchi Prefecture, western Japan, Hironaka studied at Kyoto University and then at Harvard University.

Specializing in algebraic geometry, he became the second Japanese mathematician to win the Fields Medal, often described as the "Nobel Prize in mathematics," in 1970 for his research on the resolution of singularities on an algebraic variety.

Hironaka received the Order of Culture in 1975.

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.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]