That's blown it! Today I learned I'm too old to win a medal for maths. Damn! Left it too late. You have to be under 40 to win a Fields medal from the International Mathematical Union. Nobody told me. They didn't shout about that one, did they?
Young Arran Fernandez is 15 and he starts at Cambridge this month, after a stonking performance in his A levels. He has plenty of time, getting GCSE A* out of the way when he was five. I was still playing with teddies and mud pies at that age. Big mistake.
Why this rush to do everything so young? Most of us will live two-thirds of our lives after the age of 30. Not all of that will be spent drooling or running down cats with the mobility scooter. Brilliant French mathematician Evariste Galois was killed aged 20 in a fight over a woman. A bit older and he'd have walked away from that one. Working on the probability that there would be another along soon.
It's possible to be young, gifted, a whiz at maths and daft as a brush. Good luck to Arran, hope he gets the prize, but be even better if he has a totally amazing time.
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