Cambridge professor has had his Fields Medal stolen

Baku. 2 August. REPORT.AZ/ A Cambridge professor who won one of the most prestigious prizes in mathematics, the Fields Medal, has had his award stolen in Brazil. Report informs citing the BBC.

Professor Caucher Birkar, a Kurd, came to the UK as a refugee from Iran.

He was one of four people honoured for their contributions to mathematicsand had said that he "couldn't imagine that this would come true".

But just minutes later, he discovered that the 14-carat gold medal had gone missing.

According to Brazil's TV Globo, he left it along with his wallet and phone in a briefcase on a table at the convention centre where the event was taking place.

He alerted security staff when he noticed the case was missing and they later found the case, but both his medal and his wallet were no longer there.

Notably, Caucher Birkar was born on a farm in Kurdistan Province, near the Iran-Iraq border, and was raised during the eight-year war between the two neighbouring countries that broke out in 1980.