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Prof Mok is Edmund and Peggy Tse Professor in Mathematics and Chair of Mathematics in the Department of Mathematics of The University of Hong Kong (HKU).  Since 1999, he has been Director of the Institute of Mathematical Research at HKU. 

After finishing high school at St. Paul’s Co-educational College in 1975, Ngai Ming MOK went abroad to pursue his undergraduate studies at the University of Chicago on a scholarship of the International Institute of Education (IIE).  He moved to Yale University in early 1977, obtained his first degree as M.A. at Yale in 1978 and subsequently his Ph.D. at Stanford University in 1980.  Prof Mok started his career at Princeton University and was Professor at Columbia University and at Université de Paris (Orsay) before returning to Hong Kong in 1994 to take up a Chaired Professorship at HKU.  He was a Sloan Fellow in 1984, and he received the Presidential Young Investigator Award of the US in 1985, the Croucher Senior Fellowship Award of Hong Kong in 1998, the State Natural Science Award (Class II) of China in 2007, and the Bergman Prize of the American Mathematical Society in 2009.  Professor Mok has been serving on the Editorial Board of Mathematische Annalen since 1992 and he was on the Editorial Board of Inventiones Mathematicae from 2002 to 2014.  Professor Mok was an Invited Speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in Zurich in 1994 and he served on the Panel for Algebraic and Complex Geometry for ICM 2006 in Madrid resp. the Panel for Analysis and its Applications for ICM 2014 in Seoul as Core Member.  He was a Member of the Fields Medal Committee for ICM 2010 in Hyderabad.  In 2015, Prof Mok was elected Academician of The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

Prof Mok is dedicated to research in Several Complex Variables, Complex Differential Geometry and Algebraic Geometry.  In 1988, using the Ricci flow in Non-linear Partial Differential Equations and the theory of rational curves in Algebraic Geometry, Prof Mok resolved the Generalized Frankel Conjecture.  He introduced the algebro-geometrization of complete Kähler manifolds and collaborated with Professor Jiaqing Zhong from the CAS to prove the Compactification Theorem for complete Kähler manifolds of finite volume, publishing their result in Annals of Mathematics in 1989.  The latter article was the first in the authoritative journal coauthored by a mathematician from the Mainland since China opened up in the late 1970s.  Prof Mok developed with collaborators a geometric theory on Fano manifolds based on the notion of VMRTs (varieties of minimal rational tangents), proving the rigidity of irreducible compact Hermitian symmetric spaces under Kähler deformation in 1998 and solving in 1999 and 2004 the Lazarsfeld Problem in Algebraic Geometry.  Since around 2010, Prof Mok has been working on the interface of Algebraic Geometry, Complex Differential Geometry and Number Theory.  With collaborators he has been developing a differential-geometric theory of submanifolds of projective manifolds uniruled by lines, and he solved difficult geometric problems on quotients of bounded symmetric domains arising from Number Theory using methods of Complex Differential Geometry.

Prof Mok is a polyglot.  He travelled extensively to take part in professional activities and he has lectured on Mathematics around the world in English, Putonghua, Cantonese, French, German and Italian.

Website of Prof Ngai-Ming Mok at The University of Hong Kong

December 2021

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