Audio Edition: Sometimes Being First Means Seeing the End Before Anyone Else

Susan Vallott (0:09)

Welcome to the Quanta Audio Edition. In each of these bi-weekly episodes, we bring you a story direct from the Quanta website about developments in basic science and mathematics. I'm Susan Valtlett. Over the next few episodes, we'll be introducing you to some of the 2026 Fields and Abacus Medal winners. These are considered the most prestigious awards in mathematics and computer science.

Determination and effort propelled Jacob Tsimerman to the top of the math world. But now that he's won a Fields Medal, he worries that the field is in jeopardy. That's next.

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Susan Vallott (1:26)

Jacob Tsimerman knows that many people see mathematics as a search for beauty. Over the course of his career, he's encountered beauty many times. But beauty isn't what drives him. What he loves most is to solve hard problems and to be the first to do so.

Tsimerman says math is very much a goal-oriented endeavor. He says the truth in beauty stuff is there when you're zoomed out, but when you're zoomed in, you just wanna win.

Tsimerman has slightly wild brown hair and a beard. He talks fast with visible enthusiasm. He's open and funny, but also precise, quick to pause and clarify a thought. His fierce drive to win has fueled Tsimerman's efforts at every stage of his career. That resulted in teenage glory at the International Mathematical Olympiad, early matriculation at Princeton University, and proofs that reshaped areas of number theory and algebraic geometry, earning him a collection of top prizes. It's an impulse that Tsimerman has also been wary about. He knew it could consume him, especially when it came to the most entrancing honor of all, the Fields Medal, awarded every four years to the most accomplished mathematicians in the world, under the age of 40, in the year the prize is given. Tsimerman says he made it an explicit goal for himself not to focus on winning the Fields. He was determined not to become obsessed with it. The mind trick worked, for a time. For nearly two decades, Tsimerman, who's 38, kept his drive focused on the math itself. He became known as one of the most talented problem solvers of his generation. But as he approached the last cycle in which he'd be eligible for the Fields Medal, he realized that his successes put him in contention. He relented and dedicated himself to the pursuit. He says a couple of years ago, he knew he was close, and he let himself become obsessed with it at that point. The final push has paid off, as Tsimerman was named one of four winners of the Fields Medal this year. The honor reflects a career built around borrowing techniques from one area of math and leveraging them in another to reveal surprising underlying structure.

Peter Sarnak is a professor at Princeton and the Institute for Advanced Study. He's Tsimerman's graduate school advisor, and says he's a brilliant problem solver who can learn anything.

Following each milestone in his career, Tsimerman has taken stock, asking himself whether math is really how he wants to spend his life, and whether he is, in fact, good enough to succeed in it. And at every previous stage, the answer has come back yes. But this time may be different.

As Tsimerman contemplates what's next with a Fields Medal around his neck, he does so as a new form of problem solver rises, one that no human may be able to beat. It has him questioning his future in math. But let's rewind for a minute. Tsimerman was born in 1988 in Kazan in southwest Russia. When he was three, his family moved to Israel, where his mother took a job as a high school math teacher. Around that time, his grandfather, a physicist, began giving him little puzzles. There was one about how long it takes to fill a bathtub with two taps running, and another one about two speeding trains on a collision course with a junction between them. His mother also began handing him textbooks. Even as she nurtured his mathematical ability, she was careful to let Tsimerman know that he didn't need to go down this path if he didn't want to, even if he was good at it. But he says he didn't really take her seriously. When Tsimerman was nine, his family moved to Toronto, and he began entering math competitions. His father, a computer scientist, took him to the contests and brought him roast beef sandwiches midway through the long exams.