Cédric Villani

Cédric Villani (born 5 October 1973) is a French mathematician working primarily on partial differential equations, Riemannian geometry and mathematical physics.

Cédric Villani at a public meeting of En Marche in Tokyo (2018)

Quotes

• Fields medalists are nothing out of the ordinary at Princeton—you sometimes find yourself seated next to three or four of them at lunch!
• If paparazzi specialized in mathematical celebrities they'd camp outside the dining hall at the IAS and come away with a new batch of pictures every day.
  • Cédric Villani (5 March 2015). Birth of a Theorem: A Mathematical Adventure. Random House. pp. 70. ISBN 978-1-4481-5657-3. 
• In some situations however, when you are deeply with your problem, you feel at home anywhere just thinking about your problem. Some of my best work was done in hotels, on the train, and there's no rule. More important when you think is what goes on inside rather outside. [...] The best thoughts can be nearly everywhere.
  • "The Mathematician's Office - Numberphile". youtube.com. August 25, 2016. Retrieved September 16, 2018.
• When you are into mathematics, you have been so high on the scale of complexity of reasoning that you are living in some kind of altered reality. You think everybody on the street is able to understand complicated reasoning [...]. And you get very frustrated, when you discover that's not the case.
  • "Mathematics: Beauty vs Utility - Numberphile". youtube.com. January 19, 2017. Retrieved September 16, 2018.