The Twin Prime Hero - Issue 18 : Genius
▻http://nautil.us/issue/18/genius/the-twin-prime-hero-rd
Yitang “Tom” Zhang spent the seven years following the completion of his Ph.D. in mathematics floating between Kentucky and Queens, working for a chain of Subway restaurants, and doing odd accounting work. Now he is on a lecture tour that includes stops at Harvard, Columbia, Caltech, and Princeton, is fielding multiple professorship offers, and spends two hours a day dealing with the press. That’s because, in April, Zhang proved a theorem that had eluded mathematicians for a century or more. When we called Zhang to see what he thought of being thrust into the spotlight, we found a shy, modest man, genuinely disinterested in all the fuss. Mathematicians don’t tend to get famous. That’s probably because it’s hard for the public to grasp what they do. The importance of the light bulb, (...)
