On the morning of August 3.
The sky above Saint Petersburg was clear and bright.
The conference hall at the Corinthia Hotel was packed with people.
Although the hall was spacious enough this time, the sheer number of attendees, combined with the two security checkpoints at the entrance, still left people entering shoulder to shoulder. The crowded aisles barely had room to stand.
As in previous years, Professor Viana, chairman of the congress organizing committee, and Shigefumi Mori, president of the International Mathematical Union, took the stage in turn to deliver their opening addresses. They welcomed scholars visiting from across the country and thanked Russia and the various sectors of Saint Petersburg society for their support of mathematics.
Then, with everyone eagerly anticipating it, the congress moved on to its most exciting event: the award ceremony.
This was arguably the centerpiece of the entire congress. In fact, quite a few people had come specifically for it.
The four categories of awards about to be presented represented some of the highest honors in mathematics. Winning any one of them would virtually guarantee a smooth road ahead for the recipient's mathematical career.
Especially the Fields Medal.
Compared with lifetime achievement awards, which carried an element of consolation and marked something of a closing chapter in an academic career, the Fields Medal, open only to those under forty, was the crown countless mathematicians dreamed of wearing.
Most people admired hard work, but everyone longed to be a genius.
That was especially true in mathematics, a field that belonged to geniuses.
Sitting among the crowd, Lu Zhou could clearly hear the people beside him heatedly discussing who might receive this supreme honor.
"Geordie Williamson, Australia's youngest mathematics academy fellow. He established a purely algebraic Hodge theory for polynomial rings and successfully proved the Kazhdan-Lusztig