Birth of a Theorem by Cédric Villani

You’re privy to the dining-hall conversations at the world’s greatest research institutions. You join him in unproductive lulls and late-night breakthroughs. Villani’s diaries, emails, and musings enmesh you in the process of discovery. It doesn’t simplify or overexplain rather, it invites readers into collaboration. It invites readers inside the mind of a great mathematician as he wrestles with the most important work of his career.But you don’t have to understand nonlinear Landau damping to love Birth of a Theorem.

Birth of a Theorem is Villani’s own account of the years leading up to the award. In 2010, French mathematician Cédric Villani received the Fields Medal, the most coveted prize in mathematics, in recognition of a proof which he devised with his close collaborator Clément Mouhot to explain one of the most surprising theories in classical physics.