While I Was Away

After the Oxford Workshop I enjoyed a two-week family vacation in Spain, where there was no rain in the plain, just very hot up to 106℉. The old Spanish cities knew how to optimize for shade and breeze, more than I can say for Oxford.

Meanwhile in a more moderate Brazilian climate, the International Congress of Mathematicians awarded their medals, including the Rolf Nevanlinna Prize to Constantinos Daskalakis in a year with several very strong candidates. The Nevanlinna prize gets awarded every four years to a researcher under 40 for contributions to mathematical aspects of information sciences. Costis was the then-student author of the 2004 Nash Equilbrium is PPAD-complete result and has gone on to be a leader in the algorithmic game theory community.

The ICM also distributes the Fields Medal, the highest honor in mathematics. Much ado is given to Peter Scholze who received the award this year at the age of thirty though remember that Alexander Razborov received his Nevanlinna prize at the age of 27 in 1990. Caucher Birkar also received the Fields Medal at the more standard age of 40 but had it for only a few minutes before it was literally stolen away.

I didn't realize how much I appreciate the convenience of Uber and Lyft until I had to get around cities where they don't exist. Meanwhile New York started to limit ride-sharing vehicles and I arrived in Madrid to a taxi strike protesting Uber in that city. The Yin and Yang of technology.