Math Genius May Reject $1M Award

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Someone please tell me that this is an early April Fools joke. Just thinking about turning down a million dollars is [H]. Damn, this guy is my new hero. :eek:

Who doesn't want to be a millionaire? Maybe a 43-year-old unemployed bachelor who lives with his elderly mother in Russia — and who won $1 million for solving a problem that has stumped mathematicians for a century. Grigory Perelman can't decide if he wants the money.
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I heard about this back in Dec. I don't even understand the question that he solved lol
 
lol I love the irony


he figured out a century old math problem, yet can't figure out if he wants a million bucks or not
 
Obviously common sense was pushed out of his brain to make room for (mad!!) math solving skills.
 
I've seen quite a few stories that cover people who won quite a bit of money and it destroyed their lives. While any one of us would easily take the money, some people seem to already know it usually brings nothing but trouble.
 
I'm wondering if the fella is going to go down that list and try to answer all the questions, seems to be on the extreme end of genius. I can understand him not wanting the attention, but that money could help out him and his mom. Hopefully someone close to his family can convince him to accept the prize, who knows this fella could invent something really beneficial for our species.
 
liquidtrance123 said:
I've seen quite a few stories that cover people who won quite a bit of money and it destroyed their lives. While any one of us would easily take the money, some people seem to already know it usually brings nothing but trouble.
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Maybe he simply doesn't want a bunch of greedy "relatives": and other folks coming forward with their both hands out and a guilt trip.
 
I really wish geniuses like him would better utilize their skills. We might be able to accomplish so much more very quickly if they could. However, it seems the more of a genius you are, the more eccentric and anti-social you are.
 
Whats that term, stupid smart person? Hes living oxymoron. While its confusing, I somewhat understand why he doesn't want to accept the prize. Its apparent he doesn't like attention, but man.. a million bones? He could at least donate and/or put it in the bank to provide for his family.
 
According to the article, he is "a reclusive genius who has a history of refusing big prizes" and "Perelman has been without work for four years and has declined all job offers". Perhaps he doesn't need the rubles and is too busy playing D&D or solving obscure math problems in his mom's basement to get out to get a job or collect million dollar prizes! Or maybe he is afraid of sunlight!

capt.aa7657075ad94f42bfa9b9bed6ef2f0b-459ad303f2f6497f9def1970f937f820-0.jpg
 
But can he run Crisys?

I say: Take the million. Move your mom to some place nice, and go travel the world.
 
Shambler said:
But can he run Crisys?

I say: Take the million. Move your mom to some place nice, and go travel the world.
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Gotta keep in mind not everyone enjoys traveling, or even social interaction. Some find it tiring to converse. I imagine this guy is a serious introvert (obviously).
 
I really get a kick out of this:
Dean Simonton, a psychology professor at the University of California, Davis, said the field of abstract mathematics can attract people who live in extreme isolation, are aggressively nonconformist and "too often let their personalities interfere with their professional success."
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What kind of label would the FBI hang on you if the above came up as your "profile", one can only wonder. Somehow "math genius" does not spring to mind first.

Apparently the guy is happiest to be left alone and is smart and self aware enough to realize it. I think that requires more intelligence than solving the math problem. Not taking the money is unfathomable to 99.999587% of us but you gotta admire this guys style.
 
People who solved problems like he did DO NOT think like the average person. If they did think like the average person, this problem would never be solved. Why can't the average person understand this?

Seems the only thing the average person understands is money is good. :rolleyes: To this man, this money is just a problem that isn't worth dealing with. It isn't worth is effort for a piece of paper that somebody says "oh, this is valuable".

Too many small minded people....
 
Hey.. this math dude has a Wikipedia page.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman

Apparently he has traveled in the past but during the last few years has withdrawn from public life. Not to laugh at other people's problems (as I have a few) but did find this funny that "according to a 2006 interview, Perelman is currently jobless, living with his mother in Saint Petersburg where he plays table tennis against the wall"!! Perhaps he is going through "a beautiful mind" experience. Doing simple math always hurts my brain so perhaps long exposure to highly complex equations and theories can freak some people out. Or maybe just the price of fame does that as well to some.
 
Trepidati0n said:
People who solved problems like he did DO NOT think like the average person. If they did think like the average person, this problem would never be solved. Why can't the average person understand this?

Seems the only thing the average person understands is money is good. :rolleyes: To this man, this money is just a problem that isn't worth dealing with. It isn't worth is effort for a piece of paper that somebody says "oh, this is valuable".

Too many small minded people....
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Right. He is making some kind of statement or being a better man if he does not accept the prize huh?

He can give it to charity, buy his Mother something(s), fund his and her retirement (joblessness has a shitty retirement plan) or anything. Refusing it is silly. His Mother should beat the knucklehead with the ping-pong paddle until he comes to his senses.
 
As long as the guy is living the life that he is happy with, then that's all it matters.
 
spinelli said:
Right. He is making some kind of statement or being a better man if he does not accept the prize huh?

He can give it to charity, buy his Mother something(s), fund his and her retirement (joblessness has a shitty retirement plan) or anything. Refusing it is silly. His Mother should beat the knucklehead with the ping-pong paddle until he comes to his senses.
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He is giving it to charity by not accepting it. The prize comes from a math institute, if he doesn't take the money, the institue gets to keep the money. He is simply smart enough to see that the money doesn't come out of thin air. :rolleyes:
 
Wow.. somebody way more introverted than I.

And people think I am crazy for "wasting" time working on writing a program to find prime numbers faster than any other program currently does.
 
something about mathematicians and not being all together upstairs. This guy, John Nash, Ted Kaczynski, hell anyone in college who might talk to the math majors... there's something different with the wiring in their brains.
 
cyclone3d said:
Wow.. somebody way more introverted than I.

And people think I am crazy for "wasting" time working on writing a program to find prime numbers faster than any other program currently does.
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You've got me curious now....
 
Trepidati0n said:
People who solved problems like he did DO NOT think like the average person. If they did think like the average person, this problem would never be solved. Why can't the average person understand this?
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EXACTLY. It's a zero-sum game; if the mass of humanity wants "progress" it needs freaks like Perelman who don't care about brushing their teeth in the morning. There's no way to stretch your mind around concepts of this sort and have enough, or rather the type, of thinking to function in something as illogical as society.

Further info which reveals he's actually quite an astute/interesting individual, distraught with the number of "phonies" in mathematics. Taken from wikipedia(!), from The New Yorker:
Perelman is quoted in an article in The New Yorker saying that he is disappointed with the ethical standards of the field of mathematics. The article implies that Perelman refers particularly to Yau's efforts to downplay Perelman's role in the proof and play up the work of Cao and Zhu. Perelman added, "I can't say I'm outraged. Other people do worse. Of course, there are many mathematicians who are more or less honest. But almost all of them are conformists. They are more or less honest, but they tolerate those who are not honest."[9] He has also said that "It is not people who break ethical standards who are regarded as aliens. It is people like me who are isolated."[9]
This, combined with the possibility of being awarded a Fields medal, led him to quit professional mathematics. He has said that "As long as I was not conspicuous, I had a choice. Either to make some ugly thing or, if I didn't do this kind of thing, to be treated as a pet. Now, when I become a very conspicuous person, I cannot stay a pet and say nothing. That is why I had to quit." (The New Yorker authors explained Perelman's reference to "some ugly thing" as "a fuss" on Perelman's part about the ethical breaches he perceived.)
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I heard this story on ESPN Radio on the Mike & Mike show, of all places. They said this 43-y/o unmarried guy still lives at home w/ his mother. WTF? :eek:

Monkey God said:
Take it and give it to charity at least.
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I'm sure she'd really appreciate it. Wait, are you talking about Charity, the stripper? :eek:
 
spinelli said:
Trepidati0n said:
People who solved problems like he did DO NOT think like the average person. If they did think like the average person, this problem would never be solved. Why can't the average person understand this?
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Right. He is making some kind of statement or being a better man if he does not accept the prize huh?
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Well done, you successfully proved the point Trepidati0n was making.
 
From some of this guys' work paper:

"We present a monotonic expression for the Ricci flow, valid in all dimensions and without curvature assumptions. It is interpreted as an entropy for a certain canonical ensemble. Several geometric applications are given. In particular, (1) Ricci flow, considered on the space of riemannian metrics modulo diffeomorphism and scaling, has no nontrivial periodic orbits (that is, other than fixed points); (2) In a region, where singularity is forming in finite time, the injectivity radius is controlled by the curvature; (3) Ricci flow can not quickly turn an almost euclidean region into a very curved one, no matter what happens far away. We also verify several assertions related to Richard Hamilton's program for the proof of Thurston geometrization conjecture for closed three-manifolds, and give a sketch of an eclectic proof of this conjecture, making use of earlier results on collapsing with local lower curvature bound."

Source: Bottom of the article:

http://arxiv.org/abs/math.DG/0211159

http://arxiv.org/abs/math.DG/0303109

http://arxiv.org/abs/math.DG/0307245
 
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