Because he finished first equal this year in the Abelkonkurransen, the Norwegian
High Schools mathematics competition, Muxuan Yan was invited to attend the presentation ceremony for the Abel Prize, awarded annually for outstanding contributions to mathematics. This year’s recipients were John Nash and Louis Nirenberg, for their respective work on non-linear partial differential equations. Ricardo Guzman was also invited, as one who had acquitted himself very well in the Abelkonkurransen for the past two years. Muxuan was allowed to take Kip Sumner as his invited guest, not only to the presentation ceremony but also to the evening dinner, hosted by the King, in honour of the Abel laureates.
The photograph of John Nash with Muxuan and Ricardo is made poignant by the fact that this extraordinarily gifted mathematician died as he was returning to his home after his visit to Norway.
