Birth of a Theorem

February 23, 2015
French mathematician Villani illuminates his year leading up to winning the Fields Medal, alternating between technical descriptions of his work and insights into his personality. The author’s stories for his children, interpretations of his dreams, and descriptions of his late-night tea-stealing escapades offer a fascinating picture of his life. The math is mostly incomprehensible, even to professional mathematicians, and little of it contributes to an understanding of the author’s process. But the narrative is enjoyable anyway, and most of the work on the proof can be followed in the less technical correspondence between Villani and his colleagues. Of wider interest than the particulars of the math is the context: Villani chronicles his meetings with eminent mathematicians and describes the mathematical institutes he visits, providing a view of the math community not often seen by the general public. His energy and passion for his work show through, making the writing feel genuine and honest. A few biographical passages veer in strange, navel-gazing directions, but there is no air of pretention on the author’s part. Though heavy on advanced math, Villani’s book eloquently humanizes mathematicians and is inexplicably fascinating even for the layperson.

February 1, 2015
Winner of the prestigious Fields Medal in 2010, Villani recalls how his breakthroughs in mathematics emerged from a state of lucid exaltation in which one thought succeeded to another as if miraculously. In this scintillating narrative (felicitously translated), Villani invites readers into this exceptional mental state. To be sure, only readers with advanced mathematical training can decipher the formulas that Villani includes to explain his analyses of Landau damping and the Boltzmann equation. But even math-averse readers will relish the excitement of a gifted mind triumphing over forbidding difficulties, particularly those that explorers encounter in the tangled boundary region between pure mathematical theory and empirical physics. But before they experience the success that transports the author into celebratory music and poetry, they share the completely human frustrations and disappointments that precede it. And though readers will marvel at his remarkable genius, they will also recognize how much Villani depends on loving family ties, congenial friendships, and supportive institutions to nurture that genius. A rare portal into stratospheric mathematics.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)