Kenneth Chang in the New York Times:
As a 15-year-old, a month in the hospital helped spur his mathematical abilities. A decade earlier, he had gone blind in his right eye after the retina detached, the result of a genetic condition. Then the retina in his left eye detached too. His father, a college math instructor, taught him mathematics while his eyes were bandaged.
“This is how I learned the power of abstraction,” Dr. Talagrand wrote in an autobiography for the Shaw Prize.
Up until then, he was an average student. “The trauma made me a different person, in a way that is still mysterious to me,” he wrote. “When I returned to school, I was, at least in math and physics, an excellent student.”
More here.