The spoils of Rio

Congratulations to Akshay and Peter — don’t spend all those loonies at once! (Actually, I’m not sure that’s a grammatically correct usage of the word loonies unless they pay the winners in the form of 15000 coins; possibly the Hawk can correct me.)

One could (perhaps) equally offer commiserations — at this point, such a prize has little to no effect on your professional advancement, but may well seriously increase low-level harassment both from the press and from certain types of graduate student who will now follow you around in a ring at conferences at a respectful distance of two to six feet. (Perhaps they already do.)

Of course, echoing Emmanuel’s sentiments, in addition to not forgetting the collaborators of this year’s Fields medalists, let us especially not forget those people (currently estimated as a set of size one cough cough) who have collaborated with at least two of this year’s winners — you have clearly inspired [edit: adeptly ridden the coattails of] the next generation of mathematicians.