A Meddlesome Moment at the Fields Medal Awards!
The Fields Medal is the most prestigious award in mathematics, a recognition so esteemed that it is often compared to the Nobel Prize. Every four years, a selection committee chooses two to four mathematicians under the age of 40 to honour for their “existing work and for the promise of future achievement”. Then, at a meeting of the International Congress of Mathematics, they announce the winners and hand out 14-carat gold medals that cost more than $US4000 ($NZ5932) each.
When Caucher Birkar, a professor at Cambridge University, heard that he would be awarded one of this year’s medals at a ceremony in Rio de Janeiro, he was thrilled.Cambridge University released a statement saying that Birkar was honoured “for his work on categorising different kinds of polynomial equations. He proved that the infinite variety of such equations can be split into a finite number of classifications, a major breakthrough in the field of bi-rational geometry,” the statement said.
The 40-year-old, who specialises in algebraic geometry, was raised in a Kurdish village in Iran and, after studying at the University of Tehran, sought political asylum in Britain and completed his studies at the University of Nottingham.
In an interview with Quanta magazine, Birkar said that “to go from the point that I didn’t imagine meeting these people to the point where someday I hold a medal myself – I just couldn’t imagine that this would come true“.
Then the medal was stolen from him shortly after he received it. Birkar apparently put his medal in his briefcase, alongside his wallet and phone. He left the briefcase on a table in the convention centre, and, in a matter of minutes, the briefcase was gone, according to Brazilian outlets.
Someone was very meddlesome!
