Congratulations to Professor Bhargava!

It was announced this week that Manjul Bhargava won the Fields medal! I'm not that surprised to hear this; after all, in the months prior to this one, I heard so much speculation that he would win the award. And I heard many times about his amazing mathematical achievements. When the Princeton math department celebrated Yakov Sinai winning the Abel prize this May, I mentioned to people how sad I was that I would not be around when Professor Bhargava wins the Fields medal.

What did surprise me was that many of my friends started contacting me, telling me they saw me in the video on Bhargava that was released together with the announcement of the Fields medalists. (In fact, it was played on big screens to thousands of mathematicians at the International Congress of Mathematicians.)

I'm watching the video from my desk at Facebook!

How did I end up in that video? I knew Bhargava was away from Princeton the whole school 2013-2014 year, so I was quite surprised to see him appear in the common room one day in May. I went up to talk to him and he explained he was back because the Simons Foundation wanted to make a video about him that was set at Princeton.

Then he asked me if I wanted to be in the video. I decided to go along with it. (It sounded like fun!) There were several other students that were also pulled into this video production.

The videographer following him around (who I didn't notice at first) asked me and the other students to do several things with Bhargava, including:

1. walking into the common room and taking seats at a table
2. listening to Bhargava teach us a card trick
3. walking out of the common room

Only the card trick parts made it to the video though.