Shing-Tung Yau
Tian was born in Nanjing, Jiangsu, China. He qualified in the second college entrance exam after Cultural Revolution in 1978. He graduated from Nanjing University in 1982, and received a master's degree from Peking University in 1984. In 1988, he received a Ph.D. in mathematics from Harvard University, under the supervision of Shing-Tung Yau.