Arts
book review
The journey of a 2010 Fields Medalist
Birth of a Theorem: A Mathematical Adventure is the recently released English translation of Cédric Villani’s Théorème Vivant. Director of the Institut Henri Poincaré in Paris, Villani cuts a unique figure, frequently wearing large spider broaches on his jacket lapel. He is an expert in partial differential equations and their application to problems in statistical physics. His book recounts his frustrating but exciting journey to winning the 2010 Fields Medal for work on Landau damping.