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Russian recluse mathematician awarded Millennium Prize
Published: 19 March, 2010, 20:23
Edited: 11 June, 2010, 23:45
TAGS: Russia, SciTech, Thrills&Spills, Prime Time Russia
A reclusive Russian mathematician has been awarded a million dollars for proving a theory which has baffled some of the world’s finest brains for a century.
Grigory Perelman solved one of the seven so-called “Millennium Problems” set out by the Massachusetts-based Clay Mathematics Institute.
Perelman, who lives in St. Petersburg, has little contact with the outside world and is known for turning down plaudits for his work.
He's a brilliant mathematician, but also an enigmatic recluse. But despite the media obscurity, he's become one of the most famous mathematicians of our age.
“He thinks he knows exactly how the world should work, and the longer he lives the more people disappoint him, and the fewer people he's willing to allow in his life, and he actually has very sound reasons every time, the rules are solid," Gessen told RT.
Perelman has just been awarded the prestigious Millenium Prize and $1 million by the Clay Mathematics Institute, although it is not yet known if he will accept it.
In 2006 he was offered the Fields Medal, the highest honor in the world of mathematics. However, he became the only person ever to turn it down, though not without attempts to convince him otherwise. A British mathematician, Sir John Ball, flew out to St. Petersburg to meet him.
Ball, from the University of Oxford, claims he was trying to make Perelman change his mind.
"I spent two days talking to him and I think he'd made up his mind before I arrived so there was not much chance of dissuading him, but I think that he felt alienated from the mathematical community and so he didn't want to be seen as a figurehead for the mathematical community," Ball told RT.
He achieved these accolades by solving a mathematical problem – and not just any problem.
Sergey Rukshin, a friend of Perelman, states that Perelman is a unique scientist.
"Only one problem of this importance has been solved over the last 1,000 years. I'm not sure when we might see another mathematician that can achieve something this big,” Rukshin told RT.
In 2002 Perelman solved the Poincare conjecture, a geometrical problem that had dogged some of world’s best mathematicians for nearly a century.
In an official statement on Thursday, James Carlson, President of CMI, said that the “resolution of the Poincaré conjecture by Grigory Perelman brings to a close the century-long quest for the solution. It is a major advance in the history of mathematics that will long be remembered.”
The Poincaré conjecture was formulated in 1904 by the French mathematician Henri Poincaré. It deals with a topological problem of telling a multidimensional counterpart of a sphere via a set of measurements and other operations. Poincaré suggested such a test, but it took almost a century to prove that it always worked. Perelman published the correct solution in three papers in 2002 and 2003.
Featuring mathematics of formidable complexity, the solution of the Poincare conjecture is essential to an understanding of three-dimensional shapes.
Though there are only a handful of people in the world who can relate to Perelman's breakthrough, one day we could all feel the benefits. But he wants none of the attention for it.
In 2003 Perelman left the St. Petersburg institute where he worked. He's reportedly given up mathematics altogether, is unemployed and living with his mother. But whether he likes it or not, his huge contribution to the field of mathematics will be remembered for a long time.
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If he refuses, they should take the money and quietly set up a trust for his benefit. Make his life a little easier, but don't go public with it, let him decide. No strings attached.
I just say THANK YOU to this mathematician! But I think he has the right to choose what he thinks it's right and good for him! He's a human being, not someone to use or manipulate. And unfortunately, countries like US, UK, France, Germany, Israel, and others, will never tell to the population in which way they used the informations they obtained from advanced researchers(you only know and observe it's impact once or after it's done)
Sir Isaac Newton and Paul Dirac were both great physicist and mathematicians, but both shared lack of social skills to the point of pathology. Both were notorious for their inability to engage in small talk and simple social graces. When Dirac was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, he seriously considered turning it down because of the notoriety and trouble that it would generate. But when it was pointed out to him that rejecting the Nobel Prize would generate even more publicity he decided to accept it. The miraculous calculational power of Newton, Dirac, and now Grigory Perelman came at a price, being socially apart from the rest of humanity.