Cédric Villani: 'What is so appealing about Mathematics?'

Anywhere in the world, 43-year-old Frenchman Cédric Villani usually wears the same outfit: a three-piece suit, a silk scarf as a tie, a pocket watch, and a spider-shaped jewel in his lapel. His peculiar and exotic way of dressing draws attention. And even more so because he is a mathematician.

Director of the Institut Henri-Poincaré in Paris, the leading French center for mathematical research, professor at the University of Lyon, and recently elected deputy for President Emmanuel Macron's party, Cédric Villani won the Fields Medal in 2010, considered the Nobel Prize of Mathematics, for his work in the field of partial differential equations.

Four years later, the Fields Medal was awarded, for the first time, to a Brazilian: Artur Ávila, an extraordinary researcher at IMPA. The news did not surprise Cédric Villani. In 2012, invited to give a lecture at IMPA, he had predicted the selection of the Rio de Janeiro native, already well-known for his work in the field of dynamical systems.

At the time, when asked what Brazil needed to do to achieve recognition in science with a Nobel or a Fields Prize, the Frenchman replied: “Wait two years, that’s what you need to do. I think Artur Avila has a great chance of winning the next prize. He could have won the last one, but the jury thought he was too young and could wait a little longer,” declared Cédric Villani, in an interview with the Terra website.

In a TED talk in 2016, the Frenchman, nicknamed the Lady Gaga of Mathematics, says that it may be abstract, but it's not boring and it's not about calculations:

"Mathematics is about reasoning, about proving our main activity. It's about imagination, a talent that most of us value. It's about finding the truth. Nothing compares to the feeling that overwhelms us when, after months of analysis, we finally understand the right reasoning to solve a problem."

Check out the full lecture: