A classic of mathematical history in this week's New Yorker begins,

"On the evening of June 20th, several hundred physicists, including a Nobel laureate, assembled in an auditorium at the Friendship Hotel in Beijing for a lecture by the Chinese mathematician Shing-Tung Yau."

The story, by Sylvia Nasar and David Gruber, is now online.

Related material

Log24 on June 20th
(morning in New York,
 evening in Beijing)--

Beijing String begins,

"Oh, do not ask, 'What is it?'
Let us go and make our visit."
-- T. S. Eliot