There is little or no point to the endless awards and lists of everything from the richest man to the longest hot dog that dominate today’s media and I am full of admiration for writers like Boris Pasternak (1958) and Jean-Paul Sartre (1964) who have rejected the ridiculous Nobel prize for literature. I particularly admire the Vietnamese writer Le Duc Tho who turned down the Nobel peace prize in 1973 because he would have had to share it with Henry Kissinger. I even respect actors like Marlon Brando (1973) and Vanessa Redgrave (1978) for having the courage to despoil the nauseatingly self congratulatory annual Oscars ceremony. To that list we must now add Grigory Perelman, for whom solving one of the most complicated problems in mathematics was enough.
I had never heard of the Poincaré conjecture until Perelman cracked it, but now that he has rid the world of this conundrum my heart is a little lighter and I walk to my office with a new spring in my step. In a world that seems to be in an endless downward spiral at least in the world of pure mathematics humankind is marching on.
I was particularly impressed that Perelman has refused to accept a Fields Medal, the highest award in mathematics. Good for you Grigory. Although he has been portrayed in the mainstream media as at best “reclusive” and at worst a bit of a weirdo who, gasp, lives with his mother, to my mind Perelman’s indifference to the Fields Medal shows he has as much common sense as mathematical genius.
The fascinating story of Grigory Perelman and the Poincaré conjecture is laid out in one of the masterfully detailed articles that the New Yorker does so well. As a sort of counterpoint to Perelman, the magazine also lays bare the relentlessly ambitious Chinese mathematician Shing-Tung Yau who has tried to discredit both Pereleman and his former student Gang Tian. It is gripping stuff – go on, give it a go.
Perelman is extraordinary. I won't pretend to understand his achievement, I'm more impressed by his turning down the Fields Medal. It's nothing short of heroic to refuse recognition and money when one deserves them.
I fail to grasp the point entirely, to be honest.
It also strikes me how "mediated" our ideas of math are. In the New Yorker article, Yau calls press conferences all the time and Hamilton is portrayed as the playboy mathematician! You have
Stephen Hawking guesting on The Simpsons, and John "A Beautiful Mind" Nash, whose homosexuality was edited out of the screenplay. Huge egos + media= celebrity mathematicians + innumerate public.
Posted by: Carla | August 30, 2006 at 01:19 PM
Right -- I have tried to grasp the nature of Perelman's achievement but apart from it being something to do with a doughnut, I haven't got too far.
In the UK, views of mathematicians will forever be coloured by the breaking of the Enigma code by the mathematicians at Bletchley Park. These people probably made a greater contribution to winning the war than any other British individual, including Churchill. So much for irrelevant "boffins".
Posted by: torn | August 31, 2006 at 04:53 PM
They deserved it. Proper acknowledge is good.
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