Manjul Bhargava is the first person of Indian origin to have won the coveted Fields Medal in Mathematics for his path-breaking work in Number Theory.
The 44-year-old professor of mathematics at Princeton University, who was in Bengaluru last week, enthralled the audience at the tenth Infosys Science Foundation Awards by explaining why all mathematics is a search for patterns and the reason why such patterns exist.
Earlier, in an exclusive conversation — anchored by ET — Bhargava discussed a plethora of issues ranging from the importance of early childhood education to the need for a borderless world of ideas with Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy. Edited Excerpts:
Murthy: Is it true that both Harvard and Princeton fought hard to attract you as a faculty and, in the process, you became the youngest professor appointed by Princeton?