A Mathematician On Creativity, Art, Logic and LanguageA Mathematician On Creativity, Art, Logic and Language

The recipient of the 2024 Crafoord Prize in Mathematics discusses math as art, math as language, and math as abstract thought.The recipient of the 2024 Crafoord Prize in Mathematics discusses math as art, math as language, and math as abstract thought.

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It took a long time for Claire Voisin to fall in love with mathematics.

That’s not to say she ever disliked the subject. Growing up in France — the 10th of 12 children — she enjoyed spending hours solving math problems with her father, an engineer. By the time she turned 12, she had begun reading a high school algebra textbook on her own, fascinated by the definitions and proofs outlined in its pages. “There was all this structure,” she said. “Algebra is really a theory of structures.”

But she didn’t see math as a lifelong calling. It wasn’t until her university years that she recognized how deep and beautiful it could be — and that she was capable of making new discoveries. Until then, she seriously pursued several interests besides math: philosophy, painting and poetry. (“When I was 20, I think I did only mathematics and painting. That was maybe a bit excessive,” she laughed.) By her early 20s, mathematics had subsumed everything else. But painting and poetry continued to influence her. She sees math as an art — and as a way to push at and play with the very limits of language.

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