A medal considered the world's most prestigious maths prize has been stolen from a Cambridge professor just minutes after he was awarded it in Rio de Janeiro.
Caucher Birkar, a Kurdish refugee from Iran, was one of four winners of the Fields Medal, often dubbed the "Nobel Prize of Mathematics", at the International Congress of Mathematics on Wednesday.
The professor put the 14-carat gold medal, worth around £3,000, in a briefcase on a table, but moments later realised it had disappeared, event organisers said.
