Russian recluse fails to collect top maths award

[wendigo100]

His proof is wrong on page 67, paragraph 3, Line 16.

"In a sphere 1+1=3"

I spotted it, doubt many others have though.

Well done, bob. I hadn't spotted that.

[Ardesco]

Well if he doesn't claim it i'm all for growing a beard and learning russian so that I can try and pass myself off as him.

Got any good phrases to use AtW?

[bodnobal]

His proof is wrong on page 67, paragraph 3, Line 16.

"In a sphere 1+1=3"

I spotted it, doubt many others have though.

[Viktor]

For £500 I would actually collect tea leafs under under crawling around tea bushes...

Well my friend, the question is : for 500 quids a day would you prefer to collect tea leafs for the rest of your life and forget SKA and the rest...?

[NoddY]

Very refreshing.

[Phoenix]

"He is said to be unemployed and living with his mother in a small flat on the outskirts of St Petersburg."

Learn how to read.

I saw that you t*at!
Learn to get a sense of humour

[AtW]

"He is said to be unemployed and living with his mother in a small flat on the outskirts of St Petersburg."

Learn how to read.

[Phoenix]

He is probably living in the UK claiming benefit etc...and doing plumbing jobs on the side.........He wouldn't want anyone too find out would he?

[AtW]

This is way I respect Atw more than those "I would make tea for £500 / day" type contractors...

For £500 I would actually collect tea leafs crawling around tea bushes...

[Viktor]

In a world where everyone talks about money this is quite an eccentric way of life. But I remember that during the old days of the communist bloc the quality of physicians, chemists and mathematicians from Eastern Europe was far better than the present one...and the Russians were the best ones...
Now seems that almost everyone wants money, cars, properties; at the same time nobody cares about profession, achievements etc. "What is required to earn more money?" is the question of the day.
Don't get me wrong, I am not a communist. Money are part of life and you can't live without them (at least not in UK ). But they should be a consequence and not the final and only goal. This is way I respect Atw more than those "I would make tea for £500 / day" type contractors...

HTH

Victor

[AtW]

The Clay Institute award is nominated when work is produced but not actually awarded untill that work has been in the public domain for 2 years without being refuted.

He released his work in 2002 - that's 4 years. He was awared $1 mln for it and refused too.

[stackpole]

He is magnificent. I wish I could follow his solution.

Can you give us a working summary, threaded?

[Erik The VIking]

[b]

Good man - actual reward for the solution is $1 mln, and he rejected it: a very Russian thing to do, well, the Russian thing would be to bluff the way and fraudlently obtain the reward, but he is on the good side of the Russian thing.

There are two differant awards here. The Fields Medal is worth around $Ca 7000 and is awarded in the same manner as the Nobel Prize. The Clay Institute award is nominated when work is produced but not actually awarded untill that work has been in the public domain for 2 years without being refuted.

So yes, he's done the russian thing and turned down the Fields Medal but he hasn't actually been awarded the Clay Institute prize yet so he cant turn it down.

[mcquiggd]

Well, nobody is as smart as they like to think they are... to misquote a tacky 80s song.


Tough choice... live with you mother in poverty aged 40, or be a millionaire....

He should have 'asked the audience'.

[AtW]

Russian recluse fails to collect top maths award
From Thomas Catan in Madrid

Grigori Perelman, the reclusive Russian genius

Grigori Perelman, the reclusive Russian mathematician believed to have solved one of the world’s toughest riddles, failed to turn up to collect the most prestigious prize in mathematics today, stunning many colleagues.



Organisers of the 25th International Congress of Mathematicians, in Madrid, said that the eccentric genius had won the coveted Fields Medal, the equivalent of a Nobel Prize, "for his contributions to geometry and his revolutionary insights into the analytical and geometric structure of the Ricci flow”.

However, when the time came for the prize to be presented by King Juan Carlos in front of 3,000 leading mathematicians, Dr Perelman was nowhere to be seen.

Organisers said that he had rejected the prize, which includes a $12,000 (£6,500) stipend, saying that he felt isolated from the mathematics community.

The bearded polymath, who is affectionately known as “Grisha”, dropped out of view in 2003 shortly after publishing his solution to a conundrum that had vexed colleagues for a century.

He is said to be unemployed and living with his mother in a small flat on the outskirts of St Petersburg.

Dr Perelman was to have been anointed a true star of the mathematics world after his revolutionary work on the Poincaré conjecture, regarded as a sort of Holy Grail by mathematicians because it had resisted all previous attempts to solve it.

Posed in 1904 by the French mathematician Jules Henri Poincaré, the problem relates to the characteristics of spheres and other three-dimensional objects and is central to topography, a branch of maths that studies shapes. The solution could help theorists to figure out the shape of the universe.

The logic behind Dr Perelman’s solution, which draws from several seemingly unrelated branches of mathematics, has amazed colleagues.

Some have described it is a landmark achievement in human thought and say that it could take decades to fully understand its implications.

“Dr Perelman’s combination of deep insights and technical brilliance mark him as an outstanding mathematician,” the ICM said today. "He has had a profound impact on mathematics.”

If his solution stands the test of time, Dr Perelman would become eligible for a $1 million prize from the Clay Mathematics Institute, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which declared it to be one of the seven most important outstanding maths problems.

But friends have said that Dr Perelman would almost certainly turn it down. Dr Perelman has said that he is not interested in fame or recognition and merely wants to be left alone.

The medal “was completely irrelevant for me", he told The New Yorker magazine in an interview published this week. "Everybody understood that if the proof is correct then no other recognition is needed.”

He said that he had retired from mathematics and implied that he had become disillusioned with the profession, which he said tolerated dishonourable people in its ranks.

Dr Perelman was felt by some to have been given insufficient credit in the work of two Chinese mathematicians trying to reach a broader theory that would encompass the Poincaré conjecture.

He is said to have left the Steklov Institute of Mathematics in St Petersburg, where he worked, on January 1 without giving any reasons.

Three other mathematicians won Fields medals today, a Frenchman, an Australian and another Russian. The medals are restricted to people under 40 years of age “to encourage future endeavour”, the organisers say.Dr Perelman, who turned 40 this year, will not be eligible again.

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Good man - actual reward for the solution is $1 mln, and he rejected it: a very Russian thing to do, well, the Russian thing would be to bluff the way and fraudlently obtain the reward, but he is on the good side of the Russian thing.