'I am like a pioneer discovering an unknown land... I don’t try to build castles, but rather I go into a jungle and follow a path, and hope that this path will lead me to new, undiscovered land' – Fields medal winner Maryna Viazovska on her view of maths
Credit: EPFL/Fred Merz, one of the top prizes in the field. Viazovska, who is based at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne , is most famous for solving the problem of how to pack spheres in the most efficient way in a space with eight dimensions.How does it feel to be one of the winners of the Fields Medal?
Calling it low-hanging fruit sounds very modest, given how your work has been hailed as a big breakthrough. I was chosen as a winner before the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February. I believe that this decision is about mathematics and not about anything else — that’s how it should be.My dream is that women getting major prizes will be a routine event, not a special occasion. It should not be.
A topic that is attracting more and more attention is mathematical aspects of machine learning. There are many directions; one that interests me is how I could use some of these new exciting tools in my own research. Another very ambitious and noble goal is to create a mathematical theory of machine learning.