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COVERT CASES OF CORONAVIRUS COULD BE SEEDING NEW OUTBREAKS As coronavirus outbreaks surge worldwide, research teams are racing to understand what proportion of infected people have mild or no symptoms and might be spreading the virus. PUBLIC DATA ON A team of researchers in China and the United States developed COVID-19 CASES IN a model using clinical data from SOUTH KOREA RAISE 26,000 laboratory-confirmed PRIVACY FEARS cases reported to the health commission of Wuhan, the South Korea has put in place MATHEMATICS PIONEERS WHO FOUND epicentre of the outbreak. some of the world’s most In a preprint posted online extensive tracing, testing and ORDER IN CHAOS WIN ABEL PRIZE on 6 March, the group suggests isolation measures — and these that by 18 February, there were have helped to reduce the virus’s Two mathematicians who used infinitely many whole numbers 37,400 people with the virus in spread, say the World Health randomness to cast light on the had to conceal some kind of Wuhan whom authorities didn’t Organization and other experts. certainties of mathematics have regular structure. Margulis know about — roughly 60% of But the specificity of the won the 2020 Abel Prize — one built on some of Furstenberg’s all infections (C. Wang et al. publicly available data related to of the field’s most prestigious ideas in his own work on the Preprint at medRxiv http://doi. this has raised privacy concerns. awards. theory of symmetries, which org/ggntm2; 2020). Most such Data trails released about some Israeli Hillel Furstenberg encompasses continuous cases were in people who had of the infected people have been (above, left) and Russian transformations in geometry, mild or no symptoms but could so detailed that the individuals American Gregory Margulis such as the rotations of a sphere. be contagious, say the authors. could be identifiable, say some won “for pioneering the use The Abel Prize is named after “This may explain why the researchers. of methods from probability Norwegian mathematician virus spread so quickly in Hubei For the past month, South and dynamics in group Niels Henrik Abel (1802–29) and is now circulating around Korean residents have been theory, number theory and and was established in 2003. the world,” says co-author Wu receiving emergency text combinatorics”. Each of The two winners will share Tangchun, a public-health messages from authorities, them bridged gaps between 7.5 million Norwegian kroner, expert at Huazhong University alerting them to the movements diverse areas of maths, solving about US$625,000. of Science and Technology in of local people with COVID-19. problems that had seemed Furstenberg said that he Wuhan. A typical alert can contain beyond reach. The Norwegian reacted with “total disbelief” The results are within the the infected person’s age and Academy of Science and when he learnt he had won. range of estimates of other gender, and a detailed log of their Letters, which awards the prize, “I had known about the prestige studies based on smaller data movements down to the minute announced it on 18 March. of the Abel Prize and knew the sets, says Adam Kucharski, a — in some cases traced using A common thread in the list of former laureates,” he disease modeller at the London closed-circuit television and mathematicians’ work has been told an interviewer during the School of Hygiene and Tropical credit-card transactions, with the use of techniques from announcement. “I simply felt Medicine. the time and names of businesses ergodic theory, a field that that these are people of a certain they visited. Even overnight originated in the study of physics league, and I was not in that stays at ‘love motels’ have been problems such as the motion league.” Margulis said that he, noted. Numerous websites and of billiard balls or planetary too, felt greatly honoured to smartphone apps have sprung systems. It studies the behaviour receive such recognition. up to collect and map the data. of chaotic systems that evolve in Because of the ongoing Choi Young-ae, chair of time, exploring almost all their coronavirus pandemic, the the National Human Rights possible configurations using academy decided to postpone Commission of Korea, said on probability. the award ceremony, which was 9 March that the “excessive In seminal papers in the due to take place in Oslo in May. disclosure of private 1960s and 1970s, Furstenberg Instead, the 2021 ceremony will information” could cause used ergodic ideas to show how celebrate winners for both the people with symptoms to avoid

L TO R: YOSEF ADEST, DAN RENZETTI; LEON NEAL/GETTY; JUNG YEON-JE/AFP/GETTY JUNG NEAL/GETTY; RENZETTI; LEON DAN ADEST, R: YOSEF L TO even the most random sets of 2020 and 2021 prizes. testing.