When Russian-born Belgian mathematician Yurii Nesterov reached retirement age in 2023, he found himself at the centre of a technological storm. The accelerated gradient algorithm he derived with pen and paper 40 years ago had become the engine driving the rapid advancement of modern artificial intelligence (AI). Faced with the full explosion of the AI age, the academic – hailed as the “master of international algorithm design” – wanted to continue his groundbreaking work, saying: “It is crazy to...