True Genius

Grigory Perelman, the Russian who seems to have solved one of the hardest 
problems in mathematics, has declined one of the discipline's top awards.
 Dr Perelman was to have been presented with the prestigious Fields Medal by 
King Juan Carlos of Spain, at a ceremony in Madrid on Tuesday... He has been 
described as an "unconventional" and "reclusive" genius who spurns 
self-promotion...Manuel de Leon, chairman of the ICM, said: "The reason 
Perelman gave me is that he feels isolated from the mathematical community and 
therefore has no wish to appear as one of its leaders .

The Fields Medals are regarded as the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for 
mathematics. They are awarded to mathematicians under the age of 40 for an 
outstanding body of work and are decided by an anonymous committee. 
 In 1996, Perelman turned down a prize awarded to him by the European Congress 
of Mathematicians.
 Observers suspect he will refuse a $1m (£529,000) prize offered by the Clay 
Mathematics Institute in Massachusetts, US, if his proof of the Poincare 
Conjecture stands up to scrutiny. 

Grigory Perelman was born in Leningrad (St Petersburg) in 1966 in what was then 
the Soviet Union. Aged 16, he won the top prize at the International 
Mathematical Olympiad in Budapest. Having received his doctorate from St 
Petersburg State University, he taught at various US universities during the 
1990s before returning home to take up a post at the Steklov Mathematics 
Institute. He resigned from the institute suddenly on 1 January, and has 
reportedly been unemployed since, living at home with his mother. 

Dr Perelman gained international recognition in 2002 and 2003 when he published 
two papers online that purported to solve the Poincare Conjecture. The riddle 
had perplexed mathematicians since it was first posited by Frenchman Henri 
Poincare in 1904. 

It is a central question in topology, the study of the geometrical properties 
of objects that do not change when they are stretched, distorted or shrunk. The 
hollow shell of the surface of the Earth is what topologists call a 
two-dimensional sphere. If one were to encircle it with a lasso of string, it 
could be pulled tight to a point. On the surface of a doughnut, however, a 
lasso passing through the hole in the centre cannot be shrunk to a point 
without cutting through the surface. Since the 19th Century, mathematicians 
have known that the sphere is the only enclosed two-dimensional space with this 
property. But they were uncertain about objects with more dimensions. The 
Poincare Conjecture says that a three-dimensional sphere is the only enclosed 
three-dimensional space with no holes. But proof of the conjecture has so far 
eluded mathematicians

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5274040.stm

Yet they say that men require money or fame or status as an incentive to 
achieve great things .

alan johnstone , edinburgh br 



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