quantamagazine.orgSeveral eminent mathematicians tell different versions of the same story about John Pardon. Fifteen years ago, János Kollár was seated next to Pardon at a Phi Beta Kappa dinner. Kollár held an endowed chair as a full professor at Princeton University, where he'd been teaching for over a decade after stints at the University of Utah and at Harvard University as a member of its Society of Fellows…