Last Update: Sept. 11, 2020

"... -What, Vladimir Scheffer works here!!

-Yes, he has been here for ages. Why, Cédric, you know his work?

-But of course, I gave a Bourbaki seminar on his famous theorem about the existence of paradoxical solutions of Euler's equation ... I must meet him!"

[...One page later] "After two or three general phrases, he stopped abruptly, saying that he must go home, since he uses public transportation, and what with the snow it is very slippery ... and `my journey is rather long, and' .... The end of the meeting [with Scheffer] passed by him stating all the good reasons why he must take his leave. The mathematical discussion lasted five minutes, during which I learned nothing. To say that this is the man behind the most surprising theorem in the whole theory of fluid mechanics! This is a living proof that that one can be a superior mind yet a poor communicator.

When I returned to Joel [Lebowitz], I told him about my meeting [with Scheffer] and regretted that it only lasted five minutes.

---You know, Cédric, [replied Joel] five minutes with Vlad is the absolute longest that any one can talk with him during the last five years."

---Cédric Villani, (free translation from French of excerpts from pp. 95-97 in: "Théorème vivant", Grasset 2012)