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2006 Fields Medalists Announced
otisaardvark writes "The 2006 Fields medals, awarded every four years and described as the Nobel Prize for Mathematics, have been awarded at the International Congress of Mathematicians. The winners are Grigory Perelman (famous for the ideas underlying the proof of the Poincare and Thurston geometrization conjectures) — who declined the prize, Terence Tao (a child prodigy famous for proving there are arbitrarily long arithmetic progressions of primes, but who works mainly in nonlinear partial differential equations and harmonic analysis), Wendelin Werner (a probabilist working on links with 2D conformal field theories), and Andrei Okounkov (who works on the interface between algebraic geometry and physics)." Yours Truly wrote to mention that Grigory Perelman actually refused his Fields Medalist, on the grounds that he 'doesn't want to be seen as a figurehead'.
Seems to have done the same in the past (ie: RTFA), and I remember that when he "published" his proof of the Poincare conjecture he did so with minimal fanfare (ie: dumped it on his website and ignored questions about it). It's odd only because most people want to be famous, make lots of money, be respected, be well known and so on even if they claim the contrary. I guess for this guy match is all that matters and everything else would just be a distraction.
By refusing the award, Grigory Perelman is actually turning himself into an even more notable figure than if he'd just accept it quietly.
It is said that Diogenes once walked into Plato's home and starting stamping around on his carpets, yelling:
"I trample on the pride of Plato."
Plato is said to have looked at him and responded:
"Yes, with a pride of your own."
KFG
Ze Frank says it best.
"Known as the Nobel Prize of Mathematics, the prestigious Fields Medal was awarded to four people under the age of forty that you wouldn't want to get trapped on an elevator with...."
He then goes on to disprove some of Grigory Perelman's more famous conjectures using a donut.
... to refuse a major math prize. Alexander Grothendieck also won the Fields medal but turned down the Crafoord price, a similar but less prestigious award for mathematical achievement.
John Paul Sartre also turned down a Nobel Prize because he did not want himself associated with institutions or prizes.
I wonder if in the future an individual will turn down one of these major prizes on the grounds that the bulk of his/her knowledge was discovered, developed, and perpetuated by the work of people in society as a whole.
I can see this argument being made in Mathematics, where any serious and insightful contribution is necessarily based on dozens, if not hundreds, of years of complex and insightful mathematical discoveries. During my mathematical education I truly felt like I was a history class and only the insane math olympiad types ever managed to catch up with the present. (This is true except for fluid dynamics and combinatorics -- those fields are still wide open because fluid dynamics is extraordinarily hard and combinatorics is fairly new as a serious mathematical discipline.)
I personally still think that some people deserve special recognition for advancing the whole field as a whole -- I believe the hypothetical argument above is not very compelling.
Perelman, Wiles, and most other serious mathematicians like to be left alone. I'm not sure that Perelman will like it if NPR is calling him for comment about the latest mathematical discovery. I think his argument against becoming a figurehead is fairly sound; it is good that the Clay institute and the Fields people are not taking his refusals as a sign of disrespect.
Moreover, the Clay Institute intends to use the $1m dollars to promote Mathematics education in Russia. I think all parties are winners here.
I don't know why you concluded I have an American money-is-everything attitude. My point was that by refusing this award, he makes a bigger deal out of himself and out of the whole situation. If he doesn't care about the award, he should just accept it quietly. He could send his regrets that he is unable to attend the ceremony if he doesn't want to go.
I received a couple of minor academic awards as a student, and I really didn't care about them. But I didn't make a stink about it and refuse them. It just seems like common sense and common decency to accept the attempted kindness.
Mathematics tends to be a bit better gender-integrated than, for instance, physics or computer scientists.
I had a pretty hot abstract algebra prof. once.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
typos aside,
If you don't have any background in formal mathematics, I doubt you'd understand the homework assignments for upper-level mathematics coursework at a ho-hum state school. Mathematics is as much learning a language as it is learning a science, so you're no more dumb for not understanding his assignments than you are for not understanding an assignment in a class on Sanskrit.
That said, Undergraduate mathematics (algebra, analysis, some degree of differential equations, topology, a handful of other topics of interest) isn't that different from school to school. Even at "leet" (ugh) schools, mathematics is a common major for many students who do not intend to become mathematicians. Law schools like it, a lot of science types take it as a second major, and for indecisive students it's a bit more job friendly than History (though probably less useful, you're more likely to have to write at a job than prove Stoke's theorem). So while the coursework may be abstract, there's sort of a ceiling on the difficulty of major requirements, even at top schools, there's a limit to how much headache students with non-academic ambitions are going to want to endure. His grad students, on the other hand, are, I'm sure, worked to the bone.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Last I Heard he'd gone bush somewhere in Russia. Let's face it this guy is just not interested in Awards/Prizes, he just wants to play with his math and be left alone.
Fair enough I say.
God was my co-pilot, but then we crashed and I was forced to eat him.
Yes, he probably made a political mistake by refusing the award.
Common sense & decency people will not appreciate that.
He should have hired a better PR consultant. Someone like you.