Cédric Villani: ‘Mathematics is about progress and adventure and emotion’
The second time I meet Ci(C)dric Villani is when I bump into him in the Eurostar terminal in Paris. But then how could I miss him? There are crowds of milling businessmen and weekending couples but there, amid the Sunday-night chaos of the Gare du Nord, is a figure who looks like he's somehow slipped the space-time continuum: Lord Byron on a mini break. Or Baudelaire who has returned to Earth, only this time as a Parisian banker doing the Monday-Friday commute. He has a silk bow around his neck. His hair flows around his shoulders. And when I stop to say hello, he embraces me and starts telling me about his latest projects (dozens of them) and his trips (to everywhere, he's always travelling) and the book he's writing and then he rummages through his briefcase to give me a business card.
But instead of one business card, he hands me a stack of around 50, scattering another 50 or so over the floor. "Here! Take them!" he says. But, Ci(C)dric, I say, I only need one, but he presses them into my hands and as he does so drops a file of papers and a small case on the ground. The commuters and weekenders have, by now, started to take notice of the commotion in front of them, though he's oblivious as he gesticulates and exclaims and then opens up the small case to show me what's inside. "Spiders!" he says showing me a dozen different decorated hand-made spider brooches. "I always wear one," he says and points to his jacket, where there is an ornate bejewelled spider crawling across his lapel.
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