Kurdish refugee wins ‘Maths Nobel’ Fields prize

Rio de Janeiro : Kurdish refugee turned Cambridge University math professor Caucher Birkar was among four winners in Rio de Janeiro of the prestigious Fields prize, dubbed the Nobel for mathematics, but had his gold medal stolen minutes later. It was an embarrassing debut for crime-ridden Rio, the first Latin American city ever to host the Fields ceremony, which takes place every four years. Less than an hour had passed since Birkar, a 40-year-old specialist in algebraic geometry, had been handed his 14 karat gold medal when his briefcase went missing.

The organizer behind the event, the International Congress of Mathematics, said it “profoundly regrets” the incident. Birkar celebrated his achievement -- alongside co-winners Alessio Figalli, Peter Scholze and Akshay Venkatesh -- as a fairy tale come true for the often beleaguered Kurds. “I’m hoping this news will put a smile on the faces of 40 million people,” he said. Born in a Kurdish village, Birkar said “Kurdistan was an unlikely place for a kid to develop an interest in maths.”