Interesting if true

Back page gossip from the 5 September issue of Research Fortnight.

A-cat-demic rankings You could be forgiven for thinking the last thing the world needs is another university league table. But your correspondent admits to having been won over by a ranking of campus cats by study search website Study.EU. Resident felines at UK universities took four of the top five spots, including Dennis, a magnificent longhair at the University of Buckingham, and Pebbles, a dashing black and white tomcat at the University of Essex. We’re proud to have you representing us, Pebbles.

Stolen moment Congratulations and commiserations to Caucher Birkar, a mathematician at the University of Cambridge, who last month received the Fields Medal at a ceremony in Rio de Janeiro. But disaster struck minutes after Birkar received the award—often called the most prestigious in maths—when it was stolen, along with his wallet, from a table in the convention centre where the ceremony took place. We hope it didn’t detract from the joy of winning the prize.