New Fields Medal awarded after first prize stolen in Rio

RIO DE JANEIRO – A winner of the Fields Medal has received a new prize three days after the one awarded to him was stolen in Rio de Janeiro.

University of Cambridge professor Caucher Birkar was given a replacement medal Saturday by the International Congress of Mathematicians.

Birkar was posing for photographs on Wednesday when the briefcase in which he had placed the medal was stolen.

He is one of four people this year who received what is often described as the Nobel Prize of mathematics.

The other winners are: Alessio Figalli of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Akshay Venkatesh of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and Stanford University in California, and Peter Scholze, of the University of Bonn.

Police say they are searching for two suspects.