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Math

Fields Medals Awarded To 4 Mathematicians (nytimes.com) 75

Posted by msmash from the for-the-record dept.
Every four years, at an international gathering of mathematicians, the subject's youngest and brightest are honored with the Fields Medal, often described as the Nobel Prize of mathematics. The New York Times: This year's recipients, announced on Wednesday at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Rio de Janeiro, include one of the youngest ever: Peter Scholze, a professor of mathematics at the University of Bonn who is 30 years old. Two weeks ago, Peter Woit, a professor at Columbia University who blogs about mathematics and physics, was among those who anticipated that Dr. Scholze would receive the medal. Dr. Woit said Dr. Scholze was "by far the most talented arithmetic geometer of his generation." By custom, Fields medals are bestowed to mathematicians 40 years old or younger. That means Dr. Scholze would have still been eligible for another two rounds of medals. The medal, first awarded in 1936, was conceived by John Charles Fields, a Canadian mathematician. The youngest winner, Jean-Pierre Serre in 1954, was 27. The other Fields medalists this year are Caucher Birkar, 40, of the University of Cambridge in England; Alessio Figalli, 34, of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich; and Akshay Venkatesh, 36, of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and Stanford University in California. Peter Scholze's award cites "the revolution that he launched in arithmetic geometry," the study of shapes that arise from the rational-number solutions to polynomial equations (like xy3 + x2 = 1 or x2 â" y3z = 3). More about him here. As a mathematician, Caucher Birkar has helped bring order to the infinite variety of polynomial equations -- those equations that consist of different variables raised to various powers. No two equations are exactly alike, but Birkar has helped reveal that many can be neatly categorized into a small number of families. [As a reader pointed out, Birkar's award was stolen within minutes of him receiving it.] UPDATE (8/4/18): Organizers have announced they'll provide an identical replacement medal.

Once a classics student with no particular affinity for mathematics, Alessio Figalli has gone on to shake the venerable mathematical discipline of analysis, which concerns the properties of certain types of equations. Figalli's results have provided a refined mathematical understanding of everything from the shape of crystals to weather patterns, to the way ice melts in water. Akshay Venkatesh, a former prodigy who struggled with the genius stereotype, has won a Fields Medal for his "profound contributions to an exceptionally broad range of subjects in mathematics."
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Fields Medals Awarded To 4 Mathematicians More

Fields Medals Awarded To 4 Mathematicians

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  • Stolen (Score:4, Informative)

    by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Thursday August 02, 2018 @10:04AM (#57056220) Homepage Journal
    Oddly the Fields Medal given to Birkar was stolen after the ceremony. We looked everywhere for it, but never found it. If you see anything that looks like a Field Medal on eBay please let me know.
    • Clearly it was a virtual medal and already annihilated against its antimedal.
    • It was stolen in Brazil, so it will probably end up on MercadoLivre or OLX.
    • News Link [theguardian.com] A Fields medal belonging to Caucher Birkar went missing just half an hour after he was jointly awarded the prize

      The G1 news site said Birkar had left the medal in a briefcase with his cellphone and wallet on top of a table in the pavilion where the event was being held. The event's security team later found the briefcase under a bench, but the medal was missing.
      Rio's O Globo newspaper said the thief had already been identified from security camera footage.

  • the Fields Medal, often described as the Nobel Prize of mathematics

    Actually, the Nobel Prize is the Medal in some Fields.

  • You can have it if you want it.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday August 02, 2018 @10:52AM (#57056518)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • What is the difference if he was a math genius and did his work in Delhi or Australia? Why would it matter so much to you what country he was currently residing in? You sound like a nationalist.
      • Well, let's turn that around - if someone is going to be a genius somewhere, wouldn't you rather that they were a genius in your country, and teaching your country's students, so they can help develop your country's economy? I think most people a greedy enough to want this. I would argue that this constitutes a form of enlightened self-interest. I would further argue that xenophobia gets in the way of this enlightened self-interest. One need only look at how Nazi anti-Jewish policies contributed to the United States developing atomic weapons as an example.
        • No, lets not turn that around. Why not just answer my question?

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by MAXOMENOS ( 9802 )

            To more directly answer your question: if we exclude students and other academic talent from American/Australian/UK universities - which have for decades been the best place for academics to find a home - on account of their country of origin, then those universities suffer. Eventually, those best minds go elsewhere, and in this case, it wouldn't have been Delhi, but some other place with a larger wealth of talent in a country with better immigration policies. And then those universities will attract the be

            • You didn't answer my question: why is it important what country they settle in? Is it more important for them to contribute to Australias economy, or the US economy or India's economy? That is very Nationalist of you.

              • You didn't answer my question: why is it important what country they settle in? Is it more important for them to contribute to Australias economy, or the US economy or India's economy? That is very Nationalist of you.

                From the perspective of humanity as a whole, it matters only that the brightest people get the resources they need to realize their full potential.

                From the perspective of any one nation, smart people want all of the big brains to live and work in their country, which means they want a fairly open immigration policy. This is an approach that worked fantastically well for the US in the 20th century. Idiots prefer to harass foreign visitors and build walls, ensuring that the smart people from every other cou

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • >Why would it matter so much what country anyone resides in?

          Because some turn out to have talents and you would want them to be in a country that fosters those talents, so for example they end up solving problems in mathematics, rather than growing up to be an illiterate gourd farmer. Illiterate gourd farmers are legitimate, but gourd farming can be constraining for the budding genius.

          • Ah, I see. So you are saying there is some flawed about their country of origin, and they need to be welcomed to "a country that fosters those talents" instead. NOW I get what you guys are saying. So throwing open the borders is the solution here? Or would it make every country flawed like the countries they came from? It sounds like you think some countries are better than others in "fostering talents". I wonder why that is.

            • Totally. Throw open the borders. If freedom of trade in goods is good for economies and personal wealth, why is freedom of trade in labour not? Europe opened its borders internally and all the moaning ninnies said the sky would fall in and waves of immigrants would ruin the place. All it did was improve the economy, make people's lives easier and freer and make it possible for more diverse and better restaurants to exist.

               

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You are confusing immigration with invasion. If someone wants to be apart of another country, adopt that counties attitudes, values, and ideals and language, that should be encouraged. When Werner von braun came to the USA and helped build the Saturn V, he was not waving the NAZI flag and loudly calling for the extermination of USAian sovreighnty. When the most important Jewish refugees came to the USA and made up the backbone of the Manhatten project, they were not shitting on the USA the whole time.

      Thi

  • I'm rather disappointed that Professor Viazovska didn't take a medal this year. Her career is such that she's a prime candidate - her solutions to the sphere packing problem for S8 and S24 are remarkably simple and probably open up the question for more general Sn - and it would have been fitting after the stunning loss of Maryam Mirzakhani this last year to cancer. I hope Professor Viazovska gets the medal in 2022.
    • Why would it be more fitting because of Dr Mirzakhani dying? I don't understand.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by MAXOMENOS ( 9802 )
        Because: representation matters. There's only ever been one woman awarded a Fields Medal. Having a living woman Fields Medal winner would make a huge difference to other women studying mathematics.
        • Oh I see. Because of the gender. I understand.

        • Because: representation matters. There's only ever been one woman awarded a Fields Medal.

          And is this vastly disproportional to the representation of the most accomplished mathematicians?

          Having a living woman Fields Medal winner would make a huge difference to other women studying mathematics.

          I've always found such lines of reasoning funny. Has it ever prevented women from studying mathematics when there was no Fields medal at all? Has it prevented men? Does having a living Fields medalist of my nationality help me, as opposed to all of them being foreigners? And had Mirzakhani not died, would there be less pressure to award it to Viazovska? It all sounds like a solution in search of a problem to me.

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