Was he? He was a child prodigy, which got him a lot of coverage in wider media, but then grew up and really became known in math circles. I'm sure he made lots of contributions to pure math and all and has won multiple academia-focused awards, but he didn't really make news outside of the math/academic area. Suddenly, with this AI math thing in the past year or two, he is starting to get more non-academic focused attention.
Yes he was. I was at some of lectures he gave, and there were literal queues to get his autograph.
> Suddenly, with this AI math thing in the past year or two, he is starting to get more non-academic focused attention.
He's just gaining popularity in your bubble, which is probably not much larger than the audience he previously had. It's not like he's suddenly become orders of magnitude more famous.
Was he? He was a child prodigy, which got him a lot of coverage in wider media, but then grew up and really became known in math circles. I'm sure he made lots of contributions to pure math and all and has won multiple academia-focused awards, but he didn't really make news outside of the math/academic area. Suddenly, with this AI math thing in the past year or two, he is starting to get more non-academic focused attention.
Yes he was. I was at some of lectures he gave, and there were literal queues to get his autograph.
> Suddenly, with this AI math thing in the past year or two, he is starting to get more non-academic focused attention.
He's just gaining popularity in your bubble, which is probably not much larger than the audience he previously had. It's not like he's suddenly become orders of magnitude more famous.