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Russian Mathematician recluse turns down $1 million prize - Page 3

post #31 of 38
7/4/10 at 4:44pm
He needs a cameo in the next T-Pain video.
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post #32 of 38
7/4/10 at 4:54pm
He doesn't deserve the award if he can't figure out that 1,000,000 is > than 0.
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post #33 of 38
7/4/10 at 9:28pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by MarsMartian View Post
it's close to physicist as both require abstract thinking and you see a bunch of physicists turned mathematicians and vice-versa.

Close, but it's harder. Physicists are "applied mathematicians", who use very difficult mathematical tools, but they don't typically produce proofs, which is another level of abstraction altogether. For most of us, or course, the differences are academic.
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post #34 of 38
7/4/10 at 9:48pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by crazyquik View Post
There are two different spellings of his name in the same article I would have expected more from a preeminent daily newspaper of record like the Washington Post

More importantly than the $1 million prize; how much could this gentleman make working for Goldman Sachs, crunching numbers on credit derivatives?

Financial math would be boring as shit to a dude like that, basically the quant guys do mostly applied calculus, stats and various flavors of numerical methods. This guy is a pure math genius.
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post #35 of 38
7/5/10 at 10:49am
Not only would working for something like Goldman Sachs be boring as hell for that guy, pure mathematics has a high asthetical appeal that applied math never comes close to.
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post #36 of 38
7/5/10 at 11:02am
Quote:
Originally Posted by JammieDodger View Post
His intention for turning it down was to not be recognised for something he considers as trivial.
He does not consider the conjecture, or its proof, as trivial. He just considers he is only one of the many people who made the proof possible and does not deserve it more than them.

In a nutshell, this is him saying he does not agree with the way the mathematical community works, the way it awards praise, etc.
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post #37 of 38
7/5/10 at 11:23am
Definitely seems more like an act of principle than anything, props to him and shame on people for questioning his judgement, I mean really, don't you think he's done enough to prove his intelligence?
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post #38 of 38
7/5/10 at 12:13pm
According to the Clay Institute:

Carlson said Perelman had told him by telephone last week of his decision and gave no reason. But the Interfax news agency quoted Perelman as saying he believed the prize was unfair. Perelman told Interfax he considered his contribution to solving the Poincare conjecture no greater than that of Columbia University mathematician Richard Hamilton.

"To put it short, the main reason is my disagreement with the organized mathematical community," Perelman, 43, told Interfax. "I don't like their decisions, I consider them unjust."
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