Poincaré Conjecture: Solved! US$1 million prize: Declined!
Science magazine cover, 22 December 2006. To prove the Poincaré Conjecture, Grigori Perelman used the equations for Ricci flow—a procedure for transforming irregular spaces into uniform ones. In this two-dimensional example, the equations prescribe that negatively curved regions (blue) must expand while positively curved regions (red) contract. Over time, the original dumbbell-shaped surface evolves into a sphere. Image: Cameron Slayden/cosmocyte.com, based on data provided by Robert Sinclair
A Math Problem Solver Declines a $1 Million Prize
By Dennis Overbye
Grisha Perelman has finally spoken.
The reclusive Russian mathematician Grigory Perelman, aka Grisha, gained worldwide fame by claiming to have solved one of the world’s most intractable mathematical problems, the Poincaré conjecture, and then disappearing in St. Petersburg. On Thursday he said he had rejected a $1 million prize from the Clay Mathematics Institute in Cambridge, Mass., for the feat.
“I have refused,” Interfax, a Russian news agency, quoted him as saying. “You know, I had quite a lot of reasons both for and against. That is why I took so long to make up my mind.”
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July 6th, 2010 at 19:19
the challege remains: reinvent the proof to fermat’s theorem that is elegant, concise and true to fermat’s bluff–that which can be contained on the side of a book page. andrew wiles provided a dissertation, which should not count.