Terence Tao

I know people who've met him, but he's always had strong views about certain things.

I mean, it's not like he was completely isolated from the math community.

I mean, he would give talks and write papers and so forth.

But at some point, he just decided not to engage with the rest of the community.

He was disillusioned or something.

I don't know.

And he decided to peace out and collect mushrooms in St.

Petersburg or something.

And that's fine.

You can do that.

I mean, that's another sort of flip side.

I mean, a lot of problems that we solve, some of them do have practical application, and that's great.

But if you stop thinking about a problem, so he hasn't published since in this field, but that's fine.

There's many, many other people who've done so as well.

I guess one thing I didn't realize initially with the Fields Medal is that it sort of makes you part of the establishment.

Most career mathematicians just focus on publishing the next paper, maybe getting promoted to one rank, and starting a few projects, maybe taking some students or something.

But then suddenly people want your opinion on things.

You have to think a little bit about things that you might just so foolishly say because you know no one's going to listen to you.

It's more important now.

Is it constraining to you?