A star French mathematician said Wednesday that he was joining the fight to become the next mayor of Paris, a rebel candidacy that poses a tricky problem for the official candidate from President Emmanuel Macron's centrist party, reports Yahoo! News.
Cédric Villani, 45, was part of a wave of political newcomers swept into parliament after Macron's outsider victory in the 2017 presidential vote.
With his long hair, billowing bowties and his penchant for ornate spider brooches, the winner of the 2010 Fields medal -- equivalent of a Nobel Prize in math -- quickly became a popular politician.
Yet he made no secret of his anger at being passed over by top officials in Macron's Republic on the Move (LREM) party this summer when he sought the endorsement for a Paris mayor run in the 2020 election.
Instead the party chose former government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux in a closed-door process Villani denounced as "corrupted."