Eventually, the controversy attracted mainstream media attention, opening new avenues for physicists' comments to be disseminated. Le Monde quoted Alain Connes, recipient of the 1982 Fields Medal, as saying, "I didn't need long to convince myself that they're talking about things that they haven't mastered." The New York Times reported that the physicists David Gross, Carlo Rovelli and Lee Smolin considered the Bogdanov papers nonsensical. Nobel laureate Georges Charpak later stated on a French talk show that the Bogdanovs' presence in the scientific community was "nonexistent".