Posted on 03/28/2010 1:40:12 AM PDT by bruinbirdman
Inside the world of Grigory Perelman: the man who solved the world's toughest maths problem proves to be a puzzle himself.
He has been called "the cleverest man in the world" and shook academia to its foundations when he announced he had solved a fiendish mathematical problem that had baffled the planet's best brains for a century.
Yet Grigory Perelman, a 43-year-old Russian mathematician, has consciously spurned plaudits and wealth to subsist like a hermit. He lives in a 2-bedroom flat with his elderly mother in a dilapidated Soviet-era tower block in St. Petersburg, while neighbours complain that his own studio flat, which he seldom uses, has become a breeding ground for cockroaches.
Now he has proved again, and in spectacular fashion, that he despises society's conventional norms. Picking up the telephone last week, the bearded genius, who is jobless, found himself being offered an academic prize worth $1 million.
He politely but tersely told the prestigious American institute offering him the prize that he would have to consider whether he wanted to accept the money or not.
"He said he would let me know at some point," Jim Carlson, President of the Clay Mathematics Institute, told The Sunday Telegraph.
"He did not give a sense of timing but I do not expect it will be tomorrow. He is more than extremely brief. He does not say too much," he added, explaining that Mr Perelman had not said why he would need to think about such a windfall.
"It is not every day that a person even entertains turning down a million dollars."
The Russian has turned down high honours before. In 2006, he was offered and declined the Fields Medal, the mathematical world's equivalent of a Nobel Prize. He said at the time he was
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
This is very admirable.
He doesn’t need it. He’s doing alright with the GEICO commercials.
Chag Sameach
What exactly is this one million dollar prize? Whoever is behind this prize should just say, “We have awarded you this prize” and set up a $1,000,000 trust fund for this poor fellow. The trust fund can then dole out a modest amount monthly to this mathematician. Getting $500 a month is what Grigory Feldman can accept and understand. $1,000,000 overloads his autistic circuits.
Good call, dutifully taken to heart.
I don't know what "ownership" is when one talks about thinking. Sorry, I haven't learned this gutter language: you and I must've attended different schools. Whatever the reason, my words must've struck a nerve.
TQ: "Humans have always tended to rise to something higher."
lmr: "Sure, if you believe that procreation doesn't count."
Striving to move from achievement A to achievement B does NOT imply that A does not count. You are arguing here against something I did not say.
Will "logic" like yours, you should refrain from judging something as idiotic: doing so only underscored your shortcomings and makes them less forgivable.
"If he is superior, let his genes carry on. "
This comment indicates that you don't even know what spirituality is. Nor do you know anything about biology: spirituality is not an inheritable quality.
Finally, whom are you kidding? Since when "getting laid" had anything to do with procreation? You are trying to convince us that your all sophomore friends chasing anything in a skirt and comparing notes on easy coeds are thinking about procreation? Men that are ready for procreation get married. And they don't speak of intimacy with their wives as "getting laid."
Some of these things you'll learn when you mature a bit. But what's truly amazing about your comments is that you fancy yourself a conservative.
Have a good lay... I mean a good day, kid.
Note: this topic is from 3/28/2010. Thanks bruinbirdman.
I attended the 80th birthday physics lecture conference for Julian Schwinger at UCLA. Understood maybe 50%, and one of the talks might as well have been in Japanese. Met Schwinger as he was walking with an aid to his car. Shook hands with John Bell too. Very interesting. But alot of these guys were also real kooks, wearing ratty suits, socks of differing colors, etc. And several of them really smelled bad.
What is it that’s said about the fine line twixt genius and insanity?
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