"Dr. Jong-Il Park is recognized as a world renowned mathematician
for his remarkable achievements in the field of 4-dimensional manifolds."

Dr. Jong-Il Park, professor of Department of Mathematical Sciences at Seoul National University, is recognized as a world renowned mathematician for his remarkable achievements in the field of 4-dimensional manifolds.

Professor Park has made a highly influential contribution in the study of 4-dimensional manifolds by solving a longstanding open problem in the area of topology, symplectic geometry and algebraic geometry. He settled the open problem by constructing a new family of simply connected symplectic 4-manifolds and complex surfaces of general type with geometric genus 0 using a very creative way. A manifold is a mathematical object which is considered as a generalization of a Euclidean space. In the world of 4-dimensional manifolds, there are many interesting 4-dimensional spaces including a space-time where we live. Nonetheless, the only known spaces until 2003 in the category of simply connected 4-manifolds with geometric genus 0 are rational surfaces and Barlow surface.

Professor Park succeeded in constructing a new family of simply connected symplectic 4-manifolds and complex surfaces of general type with geometric genus 0 and a negative curvature by using a rational blow-down surgery developed in topology and Q-Gorenstein smoothing theory developed in algebraic geometry. These results were published in Inventiones Mathematics, one of the top-ranked mathematical journals, in 2005 and 2007 respectively. This has been recognized as 'the best result since 1983 and it opened a new direction in the study of 4-manifolds' by top-ranked 4-manifolds topologists and geometers such as Simon Donaldson, a field medalist in 1986, and professor Park has been invited as one of main speakers and delivered a talk in many international conferences and workshops.

In particular, he was confirmed as one of invited speakers in International Congress of Mathematicians, the most prestigious conference in the held of basic sciences, held in Hyderabad, India, from August 19 to 27, 2010. So he made a big contribution in raising Korean mathematics status to the world class. Recently, professor Jongil Park also obtained many important new results regarding the construction of symplectic 4-manifolds and complex surfaces of general type as well as non-simply connected cases in a series of research projects. This means that he not only is a recognized mathematician but also plays a leading role in the study of 4-dimensional manifolds. Furthermore, it is also expected that his on-going research achievements will keep playing a key role in the field of 4-dimensional manifolds.