Comment by NewsaHackO

Was he? He was a child prodigy, which got him a lot of coverage in wider media, but then grew up and really became known in math circles. I'm sure he made lots of contributions to pure math and all and has won multiple academia-focused awards, but he didn't really make news outside of the math/academic area. Suddenly, with this AI math thing in the past year or two, he is starting to get more non-academic focused attention.