A (Correct) Poincare Proof!?

aphyscher writes "About a year ago, there was an announcement that M.J. Dunwoody had proved the (in)famous Poincare conjecture. His paper turned out to have a slight problem, and so it remained unsolved... until perhaps now! Sergey Nikitin has posted a preprint of what may perhaps be an actual proof."

Comments

Re:So?

[Listen Up]

Pure science is pure science. All great discoveries that have ever existed have been because of small, previously unrelated pure mathematical works (or other pure true sciences), which when done on their own seem to have no superficial meaning to someone such as an engineer or common layman, but pure mathematics is akin to pieces of a grand puzzle. Each piece is intrinsically linked to the whole picture. Looking at each piece will not reveal the puzzle, although solving each piece on its own will. This proof need not prove anything to an engineer, a computer scientist, a ballerina, or the mailman, but to a mathematician and others who understand its significance (among others) this proof advances the pure science of mathematics...and by that the world will eventually be forever changed.

Re:So?

[doi]

All great discoveries that have ever existed have been because of small, previously unrelated pure mathematical works

Unless I'm mistaken, Archimedes invented the screw pump while taking a bath, and wasn't thinking about the intricacies of helical structures before then. Certainly the mathematics of the time weren't sufficient to fully describe that structure either...it was a purely practical device for a purely practical application, and definitely WAS one of the great discoveries of all time.

Not to mention the discovery of the word "Eureka!" :-)

Coming from a VERY unexpected corner

[hysterion]

A glance at Nikitin's publication list will show that he works in Control Theory, and never published in Topology or Geometry journals before... It's a bit as if a statistician announced a proof of Fermat, with a (by math standards) surprisingly short and elementary proof. Hats off if it's right, anyway I guess any mistake would be found pretty soon.

James Harris is a well-known sci.math crank.

[rpresser]

Don't waste your time increasing his web page hits.