
2014 Fields Medals announced - johnb556677
http://www.mathunion.org/general/prizes/2014
======
netvarun
Quanta Magazine, published by the Simons Fonundation, has an article on each
of the four Fields Medallists and the Nevanlinna Prize winner, Subhash Khot.

Artur Avila - A Brazilian Wunderkind Who Calms Chaos
[http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140812-a-brazilian-...](http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140812-a-brazilian-
wunderkind-who-calms-chaos/)

Manjul Bhargava - The Musical, Magical Number Theorist
[http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140812-the-
musical-...](http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140812-the-musical-
magical-number-theorist/)

Martin Hairer - In Noisy Equations, One Who Heard Music
[http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140808-in-
mathemati...](http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140808-in-mathematical-
noise-one-who-heard-music/)

Maryam Mirzakhani - A Tenacious Explorer of Abstract Surfaces
[http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140812-a-tenacious-...](http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140812-a-tenacious-
explorer-of-abstract-surfaces/)

Subhash Khot - A Grand Vision for the Impossible
[http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140812-a-grand-
visi...](http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140812-a-grand-vision-for-
the-impossible/)

~~~
triplesec
Oh, this is great: I'd only seen the one for Dr Mirzahani. Truly
inspirational. I wish I'd had these role model stories as a high schooler!

------
mhartl
I was in the same Harvard class as Manjul Bhargava, one of this year's Fields
Medal winners. I remember having lunch with him as a freshman and being amazed
that he was already taking Math 134 (topology). I slowly realized he'd
effectively taken a full undergraduate math curriculum in high school.

I had a friend who was Manjul's TA for a probability class our senior year. I
still remember him exclaiming, "There's no _way_ that series telescoped!" [1]
when Manjul solved one problem in a particularly clever way.

The strange thing is that it was hard to tell at first if Manjul was
particularly smart. Two of our other mathematically accomplished classmates,
Lenny Ng and Kiran Kedlaya (both of whom I knew much better than Manjul), were
obviously brilliant, but with Manjul it took a lot longer to figure out he was
a genius.

I think now the secret is out.

[1]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telescoping_series](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telescoping_series)

~~~
S4M
> I had a friend who was Manjul's TA for a probability class our senior year.
> I still remember him exclaiming, "There's no way that series telescoped!"
> [1] when Manjul solved one problem in a particularly clever way.

By any chance, can you remember that problem? I have no way to understand
Manjul Bhargava's work that got him the Nobel prize, but I could probably
understand how he solved that problem, which would enable me to perceive a
slight bit of his genius.

~~~
mhartl
Alas, I don't remember the details of the particular sum.

------
IvyMike
Notably, Maryam Mirzakhani is the first woman to win a Fields medal.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryam_Mirzakhani](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryam_Mirzakhani)

~~~
kiyoto
Also notably,

1\. Mirzakhani is the first Iranian 2\. Bhargava is the first Canadian 3\.
Hairer is the first Austrian 4\. Avila is the first Brazilian

~~~
titter
Since there are still ~200 countries without a Fields Medal, this isn't
mathematically remarkable in comparison to the parent point.

So, I understand instead that you're identifying this as notable for the
following reason:

There are 100 times more women in the world than Canadians, yet women and
Canadians have the same number of Fields Medals.

~~~
IvyMike
First of all, there's not enough data to be statistically significant in any
of my ramblings, so it's all kind of hand-wavy and I apologize for that.

But my general feeling is that there used to be a few "powerhouse" countries
and institutions that dominated, but that has been changing for many years.
There's a lot more diversity these days. So I think kiyoto's point speaks to
the changes there.

In 1950, it would have been pretty inconceivable that a woman from Iran would
have had the access and opportunities to contribute to mathematics in a way
that would have earned a Fields medal; in 2014, it's a first-time feat;
hopefully, in the future, it quickly becomes mundane.

~~~
conjectures
"not enough data to be statistically significant"

^suspect this is incorrect.

------
comatose_kid
Amazing group of people. Manjul is my wife's cousin so I have heard of a few
examples of his brilliance (like the time he corrected his mom, a Math prof,
during one of her lectures - he was a middle-schooler at the time).

Here's a nice piece NPR did on him:
[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4111253](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4111253)

~~~
S4M
The more I read HN, the more I am impressed by the diversity of its readers.
Now we have the cousin of a field medalist, nothing less!

~~~
27182818284
You should see one of my all-time favorite Hacker news threads:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079)

~~~
sanj
I'm finally beginning to appreciate how my embarrassing behavior ends up
trotted out regularly.

~~~
cperciva
Tell me about it...

------
johnb556677
The Nevanlinna Prize was also awarded. This is the award mathematicians give
to theoretical computer scientists. This year the winner is Subhash Khot from
NYU. His main result is the Unique Games Conjecture (UGC) and how it can be
used to obtain hardness of approximation results for algorithmic problems. For
example, it is used to show that MaxCut cannot be approximated better than a
factor of 0.878.. unless UGC does not hold. Remarkably this exact
approximation factor is achievable by the breakthrough SDP algorithm of
Goemans and Williamson. It is not currently clear if UGC is true and the
opinions of theoreticians are split.

------
Q6T46nT668w6i3m
Martin Hairer is a OS X developer and the author of the fantastic Amadeus
multi-track audio editor.

[http://www.hairersoft.com](http://www.hairersoft.com)

~~~
Cyph0n
I'm sorry, what? A Fields medalist AND a OS X dev. I...

~~~
bsaul
I suppose that when you're working on Field medal awarding problems, building
software seems like a way to relax your mind.

That's a technique i tried when i was bulding my latest "complex" algorithm
(graph diffing with the graph stored in a sql db): Whenever i felt stuck, i
went and took an online lesson in quantum mechanics ( susskin ones, the best).

All of the sudden, all my problems seemed really easy, and i was able to move
forward almost right away.

------
ekm2
'Manjul Bhargava completed all of his high school math and computer courses by
age 14.[..] Princeton hired him at the rank of tenured full professor within
only two years of finishing graduate school, which is considered a record in
the Ivy League.'

Fascinating.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manjul_Bhargava](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manjul_Bhargava)

~~~
judk
Most of the undergraduate math majors finished high school math by age 14.
Manjul was a cut above even them in mathematical talent and experience.

------
digital55
In-depth profiles and videos about all 4 Fields medalists here:
[http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140812-a-brazilian-...](http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140812-a-brazilian-
wunderkind-who-calms-chaos/)

------
alexyes
A pity only very few people in the world can fully understand the beauty of
the mathematical proofs these geniuses created

~~~
mhartl
It is weird. Doing great mathematics is like writing great poetry in a
language only a few hundred people can read. And yet, every once in a while a
mathematical poem changes the world.

~~~
lutusp
Yes, and it's often the case that, faced with such a "poem", the world changes
without ever understanding the mechanism of the change, as with both
relativity and quantum theories.

------
javipas
Strange to see this precisely today.

I can't help seeing this and remember once more Robin Williams (RIP) in 'Good
Will Hunting', where I first knew about the Field Medal and the magic of Maths
was a recurring theme in that fantastic movie.

~~~
gear54rus
"... Former winners include Nobel laureates, Field's medal winners, renowned
astrophysicists and lowly M.I.T. Professors"

R.I.P. Robin Williams

------
burkaman
Is it just me, or are the winners not listed anywhere on this site? It says
"The Prize Committees for ICM 2014 have begun their work." And "last updated:
2014-07-30" at the bottom. Was the page reverted to an older version for some
reason?

~~~
S4M
The winners were listed yesterday, then I noticed they removed the list, but
now it's back.

~~~
kaitai
They accidentally released the names early, then pulled them. I heard
@JSEllenberg tweeted the results right away, but they were supposed to be
released after the ceremony.

------
Mz
Related:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8170640](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8170640)

------
frrp
Those are beautiful stories of truth exploration!

------
WhitneyLand
>>created an abstract theory of regularity structures for stochastic partial
differential equations

Fairly obvious but whatever.

JK!

~~~
WhitneyLand
Why the down vote, not funny at all? Hey I would be in support of them all
getting the same money as Nobel or Abel laureates :).

~~~
bwy
Sorry WhitneyLand. In case you haven't noticed, the one thing Hacker News is
most afraid of is becoming anything like Reddit.

~~~
rabarbers
I do not understand why should HN be afraid to give reasonable reason for down
voting. Looking at picture I also thought that Maryam Mirzakhani is man. I
understood my mistake only by reading down-voted comments. Someone is spoiling
valuable comments and it happens too often. Sad.

~~~
dang
> I do not understand why should HN be afraid to give reasonable reason for
> down voting

It's not about being afraid, it's about not lowering the signal/noise ratio
any further.

You should post a comment when, and only when, you have something substantive
to say. There are many more downvotes than there are substantive things to
say, which is why subthreads about downvotes invariably degenerate.

~~~
read
> it's about not lowering the signal/noise ratio any further.

idea: you can track an explanation _why_ something was downvoted without
showing it as a comment. It can be shown only if a user clicks on some type of
"why this was downvoted" link.

This would not lower the signal/noise ratio on the main thread. People can
continue having a discussion that degenerates to low signal/ratio about the
downvoting into this other link. If anything positive comes out of it, and
enough people upvote it out of the downvoted status, then you can start
commenting on it again.

This would also be aligned with the policy of posting a comment when, and only
when, you have something substantive to say.

Because unless the comment was restored back to a positive score, you wouldn't
be able to post a comment on the main thread (as a reply to that comment; not
the whole thread). The policy would be enforced, and you dang wouldn't have to
be telling people to not comment about downvoting.

------
idlewords
Some of this stuff is pretty abstruse. Can someone rephrase the winners'
research programs in the form of Harry Potter fanfic?

------
nraynaud
Haha, "But Khot’s Unique Games Conjecture has already amply proven its value,
even should it ultimately be disproven. It has cast a bright light on
previously dim areas of computational complexity and provided critical insight
— and, yes, Khot has also used it to prove major results, ones that stand
regardless of its truth."

weak people conjecture and then get results "if my conjecture stands". This
guy is a black belt, he makes a conjecture, gets a field medal for it, and
then removes it from his proof ("just joking, it works wether it's true or
not").

Still gets the medal for the now useless conjecture and not for the ultimate
proof.

~~~
sanj
My world got a little smaller. Khot's advisor -- Sanjeev Arora -- was the guy
who cemented my decision of where to go to school.

~~~
cycrutchfield
Nice humblebrag, bro

