Zhao Yigeng (L) and Yang Enlin. [Photo/tidenews.com.cn]

Westlake University's Zhao Yigeng and Peking University's Yang Enlin have made a major breakthrough in geometry and characteristic classes, confirming the Saito Conjecture, which had puzzled mathematicians for a decade.

Their research, published in Inventiones Mathematicae, one of the field's top four journals, is seen as a milestone for China's mathematical research.

The Saito Conjecture proposed that three seemingly different mathematical tools were fundamentally the same. Zhao and Yang introduced a new method called "non-acyclicity class", proving the conjecture and unifying past theories in algebraic geometry and number theory.

This work not only resolves a longstanding problem but also expands the boundaries of modern mathematics, offering new tools for future research.

Zhao received his master's degree in basic mathematics from Capital Normal University in 2011 and his Doctor's degree from the University of Regensburg in Germany in 2016. Since then, he has been engaged in postdoctoral research and teaching at the German school. He joined Westlake University in October 2019 as an assistant professor. Zhao's research fields are number theory and algebraic geometry, and his current research interests are high-dimensional class field theory and geometric bifurcated theory.

Zhao and Yang's research is published in Inventiones Mathematicae, one of the field's top four journals. [Photo/tidenews.com.cn]