According to American mathematician John Boll, Grigory Perelman (on photo) did not want to come to Madrid, since he does not consider himself a part of the "international mathematics community."
Photo: AP
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Award Loses a Hero
// Russian Mathematician Grigory Perelman Refuses Fields Prize
Yesterday the names were announced of the four laureates of the highest prize in the field of mathematics, the Fields Prize. Among the winners were two Russian scholars, Andrey Okunkov and Grigory Perelman. Perelman refused the prize and an additional $1 million award for reasons that were not entirely clear. His colleagues offered several explanations, ranging from the laureate's "eccentric individualism" to his possible exit from the field of mathematics.
The names of the nominees for the Fields Prize (the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for mathematics) were announced August 22 during the ceremony opening the International Congress of Mathematicians in Madrid. This year's winners were Australia's Terence Tao, France's Wendelin Werner, and Russia's Andrey Okunkov and Grigory Perelman.
The Fields Medal (carrying an award of $9,500) is awarded by the International Mathematics Congress every four years. The award was founded by Canadian scholar John Charles Fields and was first awarded in 1936. Since 1950 the Fields Medal has been regularly awarded personally by the King of Spain for contributions to the development of the science of mathematics as a whole. The prize can be awarded to up to four scholars under the age of 40. To date, 44 mathematicians have received the award, including eight Russians.
Grigory Perelman received the prize for his proof of Poincare's conjecture for three-dimensional surfaces. This part of Poincare's conjecture was one of the "millennium prize problems" for which the American Clay Mathematics Institute promised a purse of $1 million to anyone who came up with a solution. However, Perelman refused the award without explaining his reasons. Similarly, according to American mathematician John Boll, Perelman did not want to come to Madrid, since he does not consider himself a part of the "international mathematics community." "He has no hostility towards mathematicians, and it is inconceivable that he would," said Anatoly Vershik, the president of the St. Petersburg Mathematics Society and the head of the laboratory at the St. Petersburg branch of the Steklov Mathematics Institute, where Perelman worked until recently. "Certain norms of life and the situation of the sciences simply do not suit him, just like anyone else."
It is also said that Perelman simply has no love for prizes and publicity. Ten years ago, he turned down a prestigious prize from the European Mathematical Society, claiming that he had not completed his work within the framework of the requirements for the prize. Vershik commented that the discovery itself was the real prize for the mathematician, one that "does not require material affirmation."
Nonetheless Perelman, who left the Steklov Institute six months ago, could have done with the money. "He was an undoubted favorite at the institute," Vershik told Kommersant. "It is possible that he left in order to pursue mathematics far from prying eyes. It is possible that his move was a show of individualism of the highest kind." Rumors are already flying within the mathematics society that Perelman not only left the institute but also decided to abandon his mathematics career and science in general.
On the other hand, it is possible that Perelman was reacting to attempts to discredit his discoveries: a source in the Steklov Institute told Kommersant that a group of Chinese-American academics headed by a mathematician named Yau has launched an "anti-Perelman" campaign, alleging that the Russian academic's work is incomplete and claiming that only the Chinese know the whole story of three-dimensional surfaces. Perelman has not commented on the allegations: once it was announced that he had been awarded the Fields Medal, he completely stopped communicating with his colleagues. "I tried to track him down," mathematician Valery Kozlov, the vice president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told Kommersant. "But my attempts were unsuccessful."
Since Perelman no longer works for the Russian Academy of Sciences, according to Kozlov, the Academy cannot award him the prize in Russia (a celebration in Perelman's honor, according to information obtained by Kommersant, is being planned only by the Steklov Institute). However, the presidium of the Academy is confident that the scientific discoveries made by the retired mathematician will nevertheless serve as proof that "it is pointless to attack Russian science." Celebrating the Russian achievement, Kozlov said, "the science we do, especially mathematics, is of the very highest level and demonstrates good prospects."
Yulia Taratuta, Konstantin Benyumov, and Alena Miklashevskaya
All the Article in Russian as of Aug. 23, 2006
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