Thieves steal Fields Medal minutes after Kurdish refugee wins it

A Kurdish refugee who won the Fields Medal – often called the “Nobel Prize of mathematics” – had it stolen shortly after a ceremony in Rio de Janeiro on Wednesday.

Caucher Birkar, a refugee from Iran who teaches at Cambridge University, put the gold medal worth about $4,000 (Dh14,690) in a briefcase that was stolen soon afterwards, event organisers said.

Security at the Riocentro venue found the empty briefcase in a nearby pavilion. Police reviewed security tapes and identified two thieves.

“The International Congress of Mathematicians is profoundly sorry about the disappearance of the briefcase belonging to mathematician Caucher Birkar, which contained his Fields Medal,” organisers said.

It was the first time that the awards, held every four years, were hosted in the Southern Hemisphere.

Mr Birkar had celebrated his achievement alongside co-winners Alessio Figalli, Peter Scholze and Akshay Venkatesh as a fairy-talecome-true for the persecuted Kurdish people.

“I’m hoping this news will put a smile on the faces of those 40 million people,” he said at the ceremony.

Mr Birkar was born in a village in the ethnic Kurdish county of Marivan, near the Iran-Iraq border.

“Kurdistan was an unlikely place for a kid to develop an interest in mathematics,” he said.

He went from Tehran University, where he looked up at portraits of past Fields winners, to receive political asylum and citizenship in Britain and developed a reputation for an exceptional mathematical mind.

“To go from the point that I didn’t imagine meeting these people to the point where some day I hold a medal myself – I just couldn’t imagine that this would come true,” Mr Birkar told Quanta Magazine.