[1][6] Poor scores on elementary school tests convinced him that he lacked the innate aptitude to excel in mathematics.

He later dropped out of high school to focus on writing poetry after becoming bored and exhausted by the constant routine of relentless studying.

[6] Early in his studies he was mentored by Japanese award-winning mathematician Heisuke Hironaka, who went to Seoul National University as a visiting professor.

[6] Huh then proceeded to complete a master's degree at Seoul National University, while frequently travelling to Japan with Hironaka and acting as his personal assistant.

[9] In 2009, during his PhD studies, Huh proved Read's conjecture about the unimodality of the coefficients of chromatic polynomials in graph theory, which had been unresolved for more than 40 years.

[6][10] In joint work with Karim Adiprasito and Eric Katz, he resolved the Heron–Rota–Welsh conjecture on the log-concavity of the characteristic polynomial of matroids.