Although he received several other awards prior to this, including the Jacques Herbrand Prize, the Prize of the European Mathematical Society, the Fermat Prize, and the Henri Poincaré Prize, the Fields Medal is the mathematician's 'Nobel Prize,' the highest honor one can earn. Cédric Villani, a French mathematician turned politician, won the 2010 Fields Medal for his work on Landau damping and the Boltzmann equation.

If you have ever wondered what makes a prestigious mathematician tick, this book is for you. For those poor souls who have not had yet the pleasure of spontaneous, beer-infused mathematics lectures, I offer you this close analog: enjoying Birth of a Theorem: A Mathematical Adventure by Cédric Villani (translated into English from French by Malcolm DeBevoise) with a glass of wine at your side and, if you so choose, in the dark bar of your choice. Some may think I'm joking, but those of you who have spent hours in dark corners of bars in the presence of this noble, calculating breed know why: these super-human creatures turn set theory and topology into intellectual delights for those of us who were lucky to even pass calculus. However, no truly amazing dinner party would be complete without a cohort of mathematicians (and a few physicists, but I'll leave my love of physicists for future articles). In mathematics, as in any creative work, it is the thinker's whole life that propels discovery-and with Birth of a Theorem, Cedric Villani welcomes you into his.Have you ever thought about your ideal guest list for the best dinner party imaginable? One with never-ending conversation on a range of topics? Mine would include several favorite authors and artists.

Villani shares his favorite songs, his love of manga, and the imaginative stories he tells his children. You're privy to dining-hall conversations at the world's greatest research institutions. You join him in unproductive lulls and late-night breakthroughs. Villani's diaries, e-mails, and musings enmesh you in the process of discovery. It doesn't simplify or overexplain rather, it invites readers into a collaboration. But you don't have to understand nonlinear Landau damping to love Birth of a Theorem. It invites readers inside the mind of a great mathematician as he wrestles with the most important work of his career. Birth of a Theorem is Villani's own account of the years leading up to the award. In 2010, the French mathematician Cedric Villani received the Fields Medal, the most coveted prize in mathematics, in recognition of a proof that he devised with his close collaborator Clement Mouhot to explain one of the most surprising theories in classical physics.

Birth of a theorem cédric villani