The International Mathematics Conference in Hyderabad comes to an end today. The global conference couldn’t have come to India at a more appropriate time, what with the dwindling interest in the subject among school and college goers.

The buzz has been infectious. From the youngest member — 12-year-old Kaavya Jayram, who presented a paper on integer partitioning at the satellite event International Congress of Women Mathematicians to one of the oldest — 85-year-old Louis Nirenberg from New York’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and recipeint of the new Chern Prize ($250,000) — everyone at the nine-day event helped sprinkle some gold dust over glamour-starved mathematics.

Glamour also came in the form of World Chess champion Viswanathan Anand who simultaneously took on 35 mathematicians and 5 IT professionals, drawing his game with one and pipping the rest of the number crunchers.

The Fields Medals — considered equivalent to the Nobel Prize — were an instant booster for young mathematicians of this country, a good number of whom attended the event organised by the University of Hyderabad. The organisers attempt to keep numebrs alive has gone down very well with most attending universities and the government pledging support to programmes that would help the subject become popular once more.

After the fest, they just need to keep the tempo right and the gold dust in place.