Two Australian National University mathematicians set out to refine what was thought to be the solution of a problem critical to fields ranging from astrophysics through medicine to finance. They wound up solving the problem almost 200 years after it was formulated

Neil Trudinger and Xu-Jia Wang are renowned world wide for their work on second order elliptic partial differential equations. These equations have applications including the optimisation of public transport systems, tracking the flow of blood through the body, working out the distribution of matter in the universe and tracing the flow of money in financial markets.

Trudinger has been awarded the American Mathematical Society's Leroy P. Steele Prize for Mathematical Exposition for his research monograph, Elliptic Partial Differential Equations of Second Order, co-authored with colleague, the late David Gilbarg. Wang won the prestigious 2007 Morningside Gold Medal of Mathematics of the International Congress of Chinese Mathematicians.