From the New York Times: "Grigory Perelman, a reclusive Russian mathematician who solved a key piece in a century-old puzzle known as the Poincaré conjecture, was one of four mathematicians awarded the Fields Medal today.
"But Dr. Perelman refused to accept the medal, as he has other honors, and he did not attend the ceremonies at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Madrid.
“'I regret that Dr. Perelman has declined to accept the medal,' Sir John M. Ball, president of the International Mathematical Union, said during the ceremonies.
"The Fields Medal, often described as mathematics’ equivalent to the Nobel Prize, is given every four years...
...and for you math geeks, here is what he got a boner about:
Quote:
is a conjecture about the characterization of the three-dimensional sphere amongst three-dimensional manifolds. Loosely speaking, the conjecture surmises that if a closed three-dimensional manifold is sufficiently like a sphere in that each loop in the manifold can be tightened to a point, then it is really just a three-dimensional sphere. The analogous result has been known to be true in higher dimensions for some time.
The Poincaré conjecture is widely considered to be one of the most important questions in topology. It is one of the seven Millennium Prize Problems for which the Clay Mathematics Institute is offering a $1,000,000 prize for a correct solution.
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