Every era has its elephant in the room. That obvious thing we don't want to see, that problem we refuse to identify, to discuss. What is it that happens to us today, strangely unnoticed despite being right before our eyes? For centuries it was patriarchal machismo, finally unmasked. Also the abuse of nature, which has now turned against it. Or racism, which still lingers, if not reigns supreme.

Masaki Kashiwara (1947) became a mathematician at an early age. His passion for algebra came to him at school with a problem he had to solve: he had to determine how many cranes and turtles were inside a box, given the total number of heads and legs. Finding the answer wasn't enough, though; he generalized a method for solving the mystery: at 23, he developed D-module theory, a key tool for studying differential equations. Now, at 78 years old and after a brilliant career, he has become the first Japanese—and the second Asian—to receive the Abel Prize in mathematics, considered the Nobel Prize in mathematics and endowed with 660,000 euros.