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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'.
Am I the only one who read Zonk's tagline and saw "I like meth"?
Fixed link for Terence Tao
Something doesn't add up here.
I think Perelman declined the medal because his solution was so obvious. I mean, who among us hasn't proven those theorems while eating a donut and idly scribbling on our napkins?
As for declining the million bucks though, well, maybe "genius" is too strong a word for this guy. I think a much wiser course of action for him to take would be to accept that prize and donate the money to a worthy charity such as, for example, me.
It'd look like a publicity stunt if it were anyone other than our very own resident hermit Perelman...he's one of the very few truly quiet geniuses in the world.
TFA also says he's not too interested in the $1 million for the Poincare business...now that is insane. Sure, fame is a bit overrated, but money? At least he could buy himself a really, really nice hermit shack in the mountains.
The heavens do not fall for such a trifle.
By refusing the award, Grigory Perelman is actually turning himself into an even more notable figure than if he'd just accept it quietly. This way he becomes a quirky genius mathematician that fits right into a common stereotype. Everyone loves to call attention to those who fit their stereotypes.
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
International Congress of Mathematicians... I bet that conference is a BABE-fest!!!
Fine. I call dibs on the $1 million prize.
... if it meant wearing scarves with your tweed jacket every frickin' day of the year, like that insufferable professor in "Good Will Hunting." He won the Fields, too.
--- I stand corrected ---
I know they say our generation is growing up much slower than previous generations, but calling a 31 year-old a child might be a bit excessive:P
(%i1) factor(777353);
(%o1) 777353
Way to make me feel dumb.
ICM gold before age 13, SAT math score of 760 at age 8, seriously, what the hell.
I wonder if he ever appeared for the Putname exams.
... having demonstrated that winning the Fields medal is possible, Perelman thereafter felt no need to bother actually receiving it, as the effort would have been redundant and pointless. Instead, he immediately set about theorizing a higher-order space in which Fields medals exist in multiple dimensions. He is even now working on an analysis of the connectedness of prize sets in the topology of the n-medal space.
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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.
It's a pseudonym used by directors who want to be disassociated with a film for which they no longer want credit. The only reason I know this is that my wife is a film geek. Here's the wikipedia article for more info. Fascinating, really. To use the name, you basically have to prove to the DGA that the film has been taken over by someone else and you no longer have creative control.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Seriously, how often do you meet an average person who's even heard of a Field's medal (say vs the people who've heard of the Nobel)? But now that this story is all over the place, the words Field's medal will enter common vernacular again. BTW, if you read carefully, it sounds like Andrei Okounkov's work is the most interesting of all the nominees. He tied together "Probability"
(<intended pun>probably</intended pun> meaning measure theory), representation theory and algebraic geometry. This is about as cool as cool can get in math.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
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.
Experiment I: He placed an empty bucket in the first corner of a room, opposite to the second corner which had a tap. Then in a third corner he had some combustible material. His instructions to them were: "I will start a fire in the third corner by burning the stuff. Your task is to put it out." Well, both the physicist and the mathematician did the obvious thing when their turn came -- they took the bucket from the first corner, went to the second where the tap was, filled it with water and then rushed to the third corner and poured it onto the fire.
Experiment II: He then said to them: "For the next experiment, I will vary the initial conditions of the first experiment and you solve the same problem." He then placed the bucket, but now already filled with water, in the first corner -- nothing else changed. He then started the fire as before. The physicist solved the problem by taking the bucket directly to the fire and put it out with the water.
When the experiment was repeated for the mathematician, he picked up the bucket of water and emptied it on the spot, and put it down. He then announced, "I'm done", despite the now raging fire in the third corner.
When the psychologist asked him to explain, the mathematician said "Well, as you can see, I have just reduced the second problem to the first, for which I had shown there is a trivial solution.
In wartime... truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies. (Churchill)