The Fields Medal · route
Mathematics has no Nobel Prize. In that empty place, every four years, a medal is hung on two or three mathematicians under forty. The 68 from the first medals of 1936 to 2026 are marked on a map of the world. Each dot is where the medallist was working at the time. Run the years forward and the dots light up; the large dots are stations, where a story has been set up.
The Fields Medal differs from the Nobel in several ways. It is given only once every four years, nobody over forty can receive it, and the prize money is very small. That is because it is meant to encourage work still to come rather than work already done. So the medallists' stories are mostly stories of their youth.
The list was copied by hand from the announcements of the International Mathematical Union, and “What it was for” is a one-line summary in our own words, not the IMU's citation. There are 16 stations. The Hironaka station of 1970 and the June Huh station of 2022 are joined by a lecture room at Seoul National University. People who are not on the list but must be seen, such as Wiles, stand as side stops.