The Birth of a Review or (How Villani Both Reinforces and Challenges Our Beliefs About Mathematics) A Review of Cédric Villani’s Birth of a Theorem: A Mathematical Adventure

In the book Birth of a Theorem: A Mathematical Adventure, Cédric Villani paints a portrait of himself, from the (dare I say) obsessed mathematician who works until the wee hours of the night, to the ordinary citizen, enjoying an impressive variety of music, to the slightly odd man sporting an ornamental spider daily. From Lyon to Paris, through the despair of not being able to eat quality cheese, Villani takes us on a journey, revisiting the path that led him to win the Fields Medal. He takes us back in time and punctuates his account with anecdotes or stories of mathematicians. We recognize well-known names (Nash, Poincaré, etc.) through stories that are less well-known. He lets us in his adventure, and we jump in with both feet (e.g., see Figure 1)