Artur Avila leaves France for Switzerland, but remains at IMPA.
This Saturday's Folha de S.Paulo newspaper reports that IMPA's extraordinary researcher and Fields Medal winner, Artur Avila, will be leaving France for Switzerland starting this month. Artur remains affiliated with IMPA, without any changes. Maintaining his affiliation with IMPA and Brazil was a requirement for his move to the University of Zurich. "IMPA is the leading mathematics institution in the country," he says. Artur also discusses his role and symbolic function in the development of mathematics in Brazil.
Read the article below, written by Sabine Righetti, in Folha de S.Paulo.
The Nobel laureate in mathematics moves from France to Switzerland – but keeps a foothold in Brazil.
The only Brazilian winner of the Fields Medal — an award considered the Nobel Prize of mathematics — is packing his bags. Mathematician Artur Avila (39) has just been hired by the University of Zurich, in Switzerland, where he will start working in August. He is leaving the CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research, a French government agency), where he was director of research, but will continue collaborating with IMPA (National Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics) — a condition, he says, for accepting the Swiss offer.
“I didn’t want to interrupt this situation,” the mathematician told Abecedário . “IMPA is the leading mathematics institution in the country.”
Avila arrived at the institute at age 17: he completed his master's and doctoral degrees at IMPA simultaneously with his undergraduate degree in mathematics at UFRJ. At age 21, he was already doing postdoctoral work in France—which gives him the reputation of a genius in the field worldwide.
The condition of continuing the research collaboration with IMPA also has a nationalistic tone. "There are roles I can play in Brazil beyond mathematical research," he says. The main one is attracting Brazilian students to mathematics—an area where the country still lags behind internationally. To give an idea, Brazil ranks Fridaysursdays in the OECD's PISA mathematics assessment, out of 70 countries. This is the country's worst performance in the exam (the other areas assessed are science and languages).
In this mission, Avila wants to inspire the kids. He gives lectures, visits schools, talks to students, takes selfies and, every now and then, awards medals at the OBMEP (Brazilian Mathematics Olympiad for Public Schools), organized by IMPA itself. For him, the OBMEP is a success story in the country's education. "Winning a medal gives you encouragement. It really works."
The Brazilian mathematician has been receiving invitations from renowned teaching and research institutions even before the Fields Medal, an award he received in 2014. "People don't win a Fields Medal out of nowhere, so the good names are circulating and end up receiving invitations," he says. Only this year, however, has he decided to analyze proposals.
He chose Zurich because it is a place that is quite mathematically advanced. And he has money: "I will have the resources to invite people from Brazil." In Switzerland, in addition to research, which will be his main activity (he works with pure mathematics), Avila will teach a course related to his studies.
His move to Switzerland, he emphasizes, is not a brain drain—a phenomenon in which highly qualified people leave the country in search of opportunities abroad. “I’m fleeing France for Switzerland!” (laughs)
The University of Zurich is among the top 100 in the world according to the THE university rankings and 58th in the Shanghai rankings. The latter considers the number of Nobel Prize winners and Fields Medals among the total faculty as a criterion for institutional quality.