Discussion keeps the world turning.
This is Round Table.
You're listening to Round Table.
I'm Steve Hatherley, today with Shan and Yue.
Coming up, the Fields Medal is math's highest prize, awarded once every four years to the best minds under 40.
And this year in Philadelphia, history was made.
Two Chinese mathematicians won it in the same ceremony.
One had been on a fast track since elementary school,
the other grew up in a quiet town with no math hype whatsoever,
no early label at all, just a curiosity
that led to reshaping an entire branch of mathematics.
Together, they took down problems that had stumped the world for generations.
What a feat.
We're going to learn about them today.
On July 23rd, at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Philadelphia in America,
two Chinese mathematicians did something no Chinese national had ever done before.
They won the Fields Medal, often called math's Nobel Prize.
What makes it even more remarkable is that they won it at the same time, at the same ceremony.
But look closer at how each of them actually got to where they are,
and you find two almost opposite life stories.