Review | Maths genius on his journey from Hong Kong to Berkeley, Harvard and understanding the universe
- Raised in a two-room shack next to a pig-pen, and with no books, Shing-Tung Yau defied the odds to become one of the world’s most influential mathematicians
- Honoured at 33 for his work on string theory, his interest in maths is wide-ranging. ‘Learning is but a peep into the vast unknown’, he writes in autobiography
The Shape of a Life, by Shing-Tung Yau and Steve Nadis, Yale University Press, 4 stars
“You work really hard for a long time and eventually succeed in doing something that no one has done before – and perhaps something that no one thought could be done – does that make you a genius? Or just an overachieving drudge?”
This is a question Hong Kong-raised Shing-Tung Yau, one of the world’s most influential mathematicians, asks in The Shape of a Life, written with co-author Steve Nadis. Yau’s contributions in multiple areas of maths, particle physics and string theory have transformed human understanding of the universe.
In 1982, at the age of 33, Yau was awarded the Fields Medal, one of the highest mathematical accolades. This was for his work on Calabi-Yau manifolds: the building blocks of string theory and links to a unified theory of the universe. As the book explains, “everywhere you go, everywhere you touch – there is a tiny six dimensional Calabi-Yau manifold completely concealed from view, that still exerts a powerful influence on the physical world”.
Like his maths, Yau’s life navigated many liminal, difficult spaces where reality feels altered. As a child in Hong Kong, after the death of his father and sister, he lived beside a pig pen in a two-room shack. Too poor to own books, he could only read them in stores. He lived at school for a year, sleeping on a desk at night, and returned home once every two weeks; in his spare time, he helped other unfortunate students. He almost became a duck farmer.