Podcast

And who chooses the winners?

What's the point of the Fields Medal and other maths prizes? Who decides who gets one? And when will we have the first female medallist? Rachel talks to László Lovász, current president of the International Mathematical Union (IMU), Martin Grötschel, the IMU's secretary, and Ragni Piene, the new chair of the Abel Prize committee about all this and more.

Podcast

Interview with Stas Smirnov

We were lucky enough to interview Stas Smirnov at the ICM in Hyderabad, India. As well as being very pleased at winning the Fields Medal and being recognised by his colleagues, Stas reminded us that mathematicians don't do research to win medals. They do it because of curiosity and he personally can't wait to get back to his theorems.
Podcast

Interview with Cédric Villani

Here's the full and uncut version of our interview with Fields Medallist Cédric Villani. We'll publish a slightly more polished version when we get the time, with more explanations, but thought you'd like the chance to listen to the whole thing.
Podcast

How to protect your privacy

By cleverly cross-referencing different databases it can be possible for evil adversaries to reveal intimate information about individuals. Given that it's hard these days to keep your details off these databases, what can be done to protect privacy? We talk to Cynthia Dwork from Microsoft, whose talk at the ICM showcases some mathematical tools to keep our details safe.
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fields medal

Latest news from the ICM 2010

Journey to the frontiers of maths with Plus as we cover the International Congress of Mathematics in Hyderabad, India
News story

Things never get simpler - the work of Cédric Villani

What would you think if the nice café latte in your cup suddenly separated itself out into one half containing just milk and the other containing just coffee? Probably that you, or the world, have just gone crazy. There is, perhaps, a theoretical chance that after stirring the coffee all the swirling atoms in your cup just happen to find themselves in the right place for this to occur, but this chance is astronomically small.