The most fashionable mathematician
Still a politician
Last time, when the supermodel jun introduced French mathematics, he mentioned the most fashionable mathematician in France, Cedric Villani.
At the request of my model friends, I will talk about this mathematician who combines fashion and wisdom today!
Cedric Villani
A mathematician who came out of the shuxiang family
Cedric Villani was born in December 1973 in Briv-la-Gaillarde, in the south of France.
Villani's parents were both literature professors, and born into a family of scholars, he immersed himself in books and music from an early age.
But who would have thought that his parents would be bent on making the literary Villani like an uncle!
Although Villani's mathematical performance is very good, and he has been "chased and blocked" by female classmates for many years, Villani's original dream was to become an engineer, and he never wanted to be a mathematician.
However, before Villani could tell his dream, his father began to constantly return from the flea market to find books related to mathematics, including stories about the great mathematicians of the past, as well as mathematical books such as "Donald Duck's Journey to Mathematical Wonderland".
Villani's enlightenment book, Donald In Mathmagic Land
Since then, Cedric Villani's favorite subject has changed from bioethology to mathematics, and he has begun to study introductory mathematics such as Euclidean geometry and trigonometric geometry.
In 1989, 16-year-old Cedric Villani finished first in his class on the third-grade (troisieme) graduation exam, and his math scores were so top-notch that he could go to any high school preparatory class with his grades.
Villani began to face a choice, his father wanted him to stay by his side (a normal high school in the south of France), and his mother strongly demanded to go to Paris (the top high school in Paris), because she thought that this was where Villani could become a talent in the future!
Do you listen to your father or your mother?
After listening to Jaylen's advice, Villani chose the preparatory class of one of the most famous secondary schools in France, the Le Grand École Louis (Le Grand High School)!
The high school is known for its excellent teaching quality and excellent students, including secondary education (99% of the college entrance examination graduation rate) and preparatory courses in the three subjects of arts, sciences and business. In the preparatory class, the proportion of students admitted to famous universities such as École Polytechnique, École Normale Supérieure de Paris, HEC Paris and other prestigious universities is very high.
Louis Legrand High School (Louis the Great High School)
In 1992, at the age of 19, Villani graduated and was admitted to the École Normale Supérieure in Paris to continue his studies in mathematics.
However, after entering the university, Villani felt like entering a new world, forgetting mathematics, becoming obsessed with club organizations, serving as the president of the student council, organizing various activities, and every day was very busy, almost stopping the study of mathematics.
Finally, Villani's teacher couldn't stand it anymore: how could such a good mathematical talent waste time on club activities!
In 1996, under the repeated persuasion of teachers and parents, he returned to mathematical research, successfully entered the University of Paris IX, and followed field prize winner Pierre-Louis Leon to focus on analytical mathematics!
Pierre-Louis Leon
In 1998, after graduating from Dr. Villani, his career in mathematics officially began to open and hang.
In 2001, Villani was awarded the Louis Armand Award of the Academy of Sciences
In 2003, Villanilian won two awards, the Collège Pecot-Vimont Award and the Cours Peccot Award
In 2007, Villani was awarded the Jacques Herbrand Award
In 2008, Villani was awarded the European Mathematical Society Prize
In 2009, Villani was awarded the Henri Poincaré Award
In 2009, Villani was awarded the Fermat Prize
In the past 10 years, Villani has quickly become a well-known mathematician in France, but these awards are not what he ultimately wants, and he only thinks of the highest honor in mathematics - the Fields Medal!
The hard-won Fields Medal
In fact, as early as Cedric Villani embarked on the path of mathematics, he had already set a goal of winning the Fields Medal.
Influenced by his mentor, Villani began to focus on the study of Boltzmann's equations when he was a doctor. He would also have started to think that Boltzmann's equation was the most beautiful equation!
Boltzmann equations in general
The word "force" here refers to the force exerted by the outside on the particle (rather than the action between particles), "diff" means the diffusion of the particle, and "coll" refers to the collision of particles, referring to the mutual force between the particles in the collision.
Interestingly, Villani has also done a good job: if he doesn't win the 2010 Fields Medal (awarded only to mathematicians under the age of 40), he will be 3 months overage when the award was given in 2014 and will be lost forever!
In 2009, while a visiting scholar at Princeton University in the United States, Villani experienced the most painful days!
Villani hid in his bedroom almost every day, closed the blinds, circled around in a circle, and his mind was full of Landau damping, regularization, Newton iteration; every day only a few short hours of rest, in just one day, Villani's discarded scratch paper could fill 4 paper baskets.
When talking to others, he would say a few perfunctory words at most, or even just "hum"; when listening to the report, he would stand in the last row, wearing only socks and pacing back and forth on the ground, saying that it was "conducive to finding inspiration". Even his wife and children thought he had become so strange.
These days went on for months, and even the rest time was calculated.
Early one morning, after only a few hours of sleep, Verani clearly heard a voice in his head: "Move the second term to the other side of the equation, Fourier unfolds and then inverts in the L2 domain." ”
Boltzmann's theory of gas dynamics, which, instead of tracking the individual motion of billions of atoms, studies the evolution of the probability that particles occupy a certain position and have a certain velocity. Equilibrium probability distribution was known more than a hundred years ago, but it is very difficult to understand whether and how the equilibrium converges quickly to equilibrium.
Villani got the first result of the initial data convergence rate that was not close to equilibrium!
Later, in collaboration with his student Muo, he rigorously established nonlinear Landau damping for the kinetic equations of plasma physics, solving long-standing debates.
Clément Mouhot
A few months later, For his proof of nonlinear Landau damping and his study of boltzmann's equation convergence to equilibrium, Villani was notified of winning the 2010 Fields Medal.
In 2010, Villani achieved the ultimate goal of winning the Fields Medal and became a modern top mathematician, famous all over the world!
Villani did not become famous at a young age like a genius-level mathematician like Schultz. He was just an ordinary person who grew up watching Donald Duck, with slightly outstanding mathematical results, and grew into a top mathematician by paying step by step.
Schultz
He is not like other mathematicians who live in simplicity and work every day and study mathematics, or he is not like a "serious" mathematician at all!
Cedric Villani outside of mathematics
Just looking at The image of Villani, it is hard to imagine that this is a mathematician who has won the Fields Medal, the highest honor in mathematics, and is also known as "Lady Gaga of mathematics"!
Compared with other mathematicians, Villani seems to be "out of place", he subverts the image of mathematicians who are deeply reclusive, he may be the most fashionable mathematician in history, dressed very fashionably, and once appeared in French fashion magazines!
Villani once said that this style was "fallen" after he wore it a few times at university organized events.
Until now, he has appeared in public almost every day in this style.
The most impressive thing is his bow tie and brooch.
......
Different styles of spider brooches
He collected a wide variety of bow ties and brooches, so that fashionable dress became his unique symbol.
In addition, he was a politician.
In 2009, the French government cut state funding for scientific research.
Villani, who was the director of the Poincaré Institute, a French mathematical research institute at the time, did not hesitate to make enemies with the president, and repeatedly wrote letters of protest to win research funds for his peers. In addition, more than $24 million in donations were raised over several years for the French and International Mathematical Union (IMU).
In the 2017 French National Assembly elections, he was successfully elected to the constituency of Essonne in the southern Paris region, where he said that combining mathematics and politics was "a necessary and cool thing".
In the end, Villani used his talents to conquer French President Macron and became a mathematician around the president and an ambassador for the promotion of French mathematics.
He believed that mathematics could be applied to various fields, so he often went abroad to exchange mathematics and promote French mathematics and his own mathematical ideas.
In 2018, he accompanied the president on a visit to China
In Cedric Villani's view, mathematics is ubiquitous, "changing the way people think, solve problems and reason, and subvert every aspect of today's society."