Fields Medalist Jacob Tsimerman Takes Leave From Toronto to Join OpenAI's AI Safety Team

WSJ profiles 2026 Fields Medal winner Jacob Tsimerman, who is taking leave from the University of Toronto to join OpenAI and work on AI safety. Tsimerman, who proved the André-Oort conjecture, publicly argued at the Philadelphia ICM ceremony that mathematicians must engage with AI now to shape how future systems reason and behave. Signals continued lab pull on top academic mathematicians.