Maryna Viazovska has received a Fields Medal, a prestigious honor often described as the Nobel Prize of Mathematics, for her work on the sphere-packing problem in 8 and 24 dimensions. Previously, the problem had been solved for only three dimensions or fewer. Another Fields Medal is awarded to University of Geneva mathematician Hugo Duminil-Copin.
She told herself, that it might help with signals processing and overall processing of things in electronics.
High-dimensional packings are not merely of pure mathematical interest, but also
important for practical applications, because sphere packings are error-correcting codes for
a continuous communication channel (such as radio).
Source: https://www.mathunion.org/fileadmin/IMU/Prizes/Fields/2022/laudatio-mv.pdf
