Caucher Birkar — from Asylum Seeker to Fields Medal Winner at Cambridge

MATHS, 1 Caucher Birkar, 41, at VERSION Cambridge University, photographed by Jude Edginton REPR O OP HEARD THE ONE ABOUT THE ASYLUM SEEKER SUBS WHO WANDERED INTO A BRITISH UNIVERSITY... A RT AND CAME OUT A MATHS SUPERSTAR? PR ODUCTION CLIENT Caucher Birkar grew up in a Kurdish peasant family in a war zone and arrived in Nottingham as a refugee – now he has received the mathematics equivalent of the Nobel prize. By Tom Whipple BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN 91TTM1940232.pgs 01.04.2019 17:39 MATHS, 2 VERSION ineteen years ago, the mathematics Caucher Birkar in Isfahan, Receiving the Fields Medal If that makes sense, congratulations: you department at the University of Iran, in 1999 in Rio de Janeiro, 2018 now have a very hazy understanding of Nottingham received an email algebraic geometry. This is the field that from an asylum seeker who Birkar works in. wanted to talk to someone about The problem with explaining maths is REPR algebraic geometry. not, or at least not always, the stupidity of his They replied and invited him in. listeners. It is more fundamental than that: O OP N So it was that, shortly afterwards, it is language. Mathematics is not designed Caucher Birkar, the 21-year-old to be described in words. It is designed to be son of a Kurdish peasant family, described in mathematics. This is the great stood in front of Ivan Fesenko, a professor at triumph of the subject. It was why a Kurdish Nottingham, and began speaking in broken asylum seeker with bad English could convince SUBS English. That was when his life changed. a tenured professor he was a serious intellect. It is also, though, its tragedy. “If I am a painter, The young Caucher Birkar did not usually I can show you a painting,” says Birkar. “For a roam the campus of Nottingham University. mathematician, what can you do?” Sometimes, when he wasn’t meeting maths Across the table from us is Ivan Fesenko, professors, he would present his government- the professor Birkar first approached in issued food vouchers at the local supermarket Nottingham. Conscious that we have stopped A and the cashiers wouldn’t know what they midway through the technical explanation, RT were. They would hold them up to the light, he gamely chips in. “Parameterisation is a or call a manager for assistance. substitute of counting,” he says. “You want This was one of the humiliating parts some accountancy to keep track of all the of being an asylum seeker. structures in a compact way.” Most of the time, though, his life at that Birkar, revived, heads back into the fray. time was just boring. For a year, Birkar, until “There are infinitely many of them, yes, but his eventual acceptance into the country, had what I showed is that it is not as wild as you PR ODUCTION no control over his life. He could not work; imagine. There is a structure to it. It’s in some he could not choose where to live. But there sense finite. It’s not really finite, but finite in was one thing he could do, one thing that the sense …” Then, again, he tails off. is untroubled by borders, legality or even Birkar will not talk about how he initiated language: he could do mathematics. his asylum claim. Nor will he say how he got When he arrived in Britain, somewhere “Often we would be in the classroom and powers of two at the age of four; nor did his to Britain. What we do know is that in the in Whitehall a computer – or perhaps a suddenly hear the sound of an aeroplane. We mother discover him arranging Lego bricks third year of his degree in Tehran he made CLIENT ‘we’d be in the clASSROOM AND HEAR THE BOMBS. human – had made a wholly arbitrary and would run out for our lives,” he says. “Many into prime groups. Instead he says he just had the journey from Iran, presented himself to utterly fateful decision: it settled Birkar in times I would see the planes drop the bombs. “a feeling … nothing serious”, that he was we’d run for our lives. LOTS OF PEOPLE GOT KILLED’ the authorities and began the process of Nottingham. And, although this was probably We were right on the border. The aerial threat drawn to mathematics. settling in the UK. not a top consideration of the Home Office, was always there; a lot of people got killed.” A feeling should have been how it stayed. For someone who wanted to become the University of Nottingham happens to These days, recounting his youth while He had no internet, he was in a war zone, he to understand mathematics in a deeper sense,” marks the point at which they have been a professional mathematician, it must have have a strong mathematics department. sitting in an upmarket Nottingham restaurant, was a member of a persecuted minority and he says. “I picked a problem or invented called upon to explain their subject to been terrifying. The career of a mathematician So Birkar, finding himself stuck in his is the dispassionate air of someone his family were peasants. What he did have, something.” Later, when he finished secondary a layperson. is a little like that of a ballet dancer or bureaucratic purgatory and with nothing better describing events that happened to a different though, was a brother six years older who school and was accepted into Tehran “So Fano varieties,” Birkar begins briskly, footballer. At the highest level of intellectual to do, went to the campus to see if he could person. “It wasn’t,” he adds, “the best decided to push him. “Even though we grew University, he would discover that this work he “they are spaces in algebraic geometry that achievement minds deteriorate as surely as find someone to listen to his ideas about maths. environment for education.” up during the war and people were just trying embarked upon – original proofs and problems have a positive curvature. Everyone has a bodies, and there is a short window in which Nineteen years later, nineteen years after According to geography, Birkar’s national to survive, he was always thinking about other – had not been new after all. Others had got feel of curvature. For instance, a sphere is just you can do your best work. The Fields Medal that day when he tentatively made contact, allegiance in that brutal conflict was to Iran. things, trying to create,” says Birkar. there first; he just did not know it. But that, he a ball. It has positive curvature, it is round goes only to mathematicians under 40 he is back, for a ceremony organised by His house was in Marivan, which sits where “When I was around ten, he started to says, was not important. “These things I did everywhere …” He looks at me across the – a stipulation that rarely excludes research Fesenko to honour one of the most illustrious Iran bulges into Iraq. But he was also Kurdish, teach me a bit of mathematics beyond my were not significant, but that’s not the point. lunch table, entreating me to understand. So of importance. mathematicians ever to come out of the which meant that his real nation – a nation textbooks. He didn’t teach me these things In mathematics, you try to do something new.” far, I do. “If you fix the dimension of the Fano Birkar, then in his early twenties, was university. The ceremony celebrates an that still waits to be born – straddled the to get good grades. He just tried to convey Every day, walking the corridors of the variety, to prove you can parameterise this spending that precious window of time living academic who is now at Cambridge and border with Iraq. It also meant that both an idea that I should learn these things Tehran mathematics department, he had a space with finitely many parameters …” Birkar in a house with three other asylum seekers, who has just received the Fields Medal, the sides hated him: this war was not his war. because they are beautiful.” reminder of what it meant to do something has supervised students at Cambridge, so is unable to work, paying for food with vouchers mathematical equivalent of the Nobel prize. He had cause to hate them, too. Once, To Birkar, they were, and so he decided, new. There, on the walls, were pictures of trained in spotting the blank signs of silent and in a limbo of indeterminate length. That academic is Birkar, and his story long before he was born in 1978, his family there on the mountainous border of Iran and the stars of his chosen profession, of the men incomprehension. He tails off. “It was extremely tough,” he says. “At that – the story of a dirt-poor Kurdish boy who were wealthy landowners, but they had their Iraq, between shellings and bombings, that he (they were, at the time, all men) who had seen Perhaps it is better to begin at the beginning, point, ideally I wanted to be in a top school of won the most prestigious mathematics prize fields taken from them. “We became simple was going to be a professional mathematician. further than any before: the Fields medallists. with algebraic geometry. In mathematics, mathematics.” But he could neither study nor in the world – is one of the most unlikely peasants,” he says. “We had a piece of land The problem was, he had no idea what that “I looked at them and wondered if I would equations are sometimes also shapes.

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