Prof. June Huh /Korea Times photo by Bae Woo-han

June Huh, the Korean American mathematician who won this year's prestigious Fields Medal, will deliver a commencement speech at his alma mater, Seoul National University (SNU), next week, the university said Saturday.

The 39-year-old professor at Princeton University and the Korea Institute for Advanced Study is scheduled to address 2022 graduates at the 73rd summer commencement ceremony Monday.

SNU, one of the nation's most prestigious universities, will hold the first in-person graduation event since COVID-19 hit the nation in early 2020. Graduates of 2020 and 2021 will also be allowed to join the commencement ceremony.

Huh won the Fields Medal, often dubbed the Nobel Prize in mathematics, in July for his research connecting combinatorics and algebraic geometry.

It is awarded every four years to mathematicians under age 40. Huh is the first scholar of Korean descent to win the honor.

The professor was born in 1983 in California but grew up in South Korea.

He majored in physics and astronomy at SNU and received a master's degree in mathematics from the university in 2009 and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 2014. (Yonhap)