Animation starts at 2:00
“What we are doing, of course, it’s shaping the future. Maybe it will be used, I don’t know, a hundred years from now. But it’s still important.”
In June of 2022 I connected with animator and video journalist Kolin Pope. He was directing a series of short films for the winners of the prestigious Fields Medal in Mathematics. These would play during the following month’s award ceremony at the International Congress of Mathematicians. Each video featured a short section of animation explaining the subject’s award-winning work.
How would I understand this math, let alone visualize it? My subject was Maryna Viazovska. She’d solved a major mathematical mystery by proving optimal sphere packing in 8 and 24 dimensions. She is Ukrainian, and only the second woman ever to have won a Fields Medal. I feel very grateful to have a career that introduces me to inspiring people and information I would never have expected to learn.
I was given a blank slate to design this piece. I took a cue from Maryna’s home country in the motif of Petrykivka: a style of decorative Ukrainian folk painting. It frames her magic function at the end of the animation. According to UNESCO’s records on Intangible Cultural Heritage: In folk belief, the paintings protect people from sorrow and evil.
The Ukrainian government tweeted Maryna’s video!
