Slashdot Mirror
New Yorker on Perelman and Poincaré Controversy
b4stard writes "The New Yorker has an interesting article on the recent proof of the Poincaré conjecture and the controversy surrounding it. This is a very nice read, which, among other things, sheds some light on what may have motivated Perelman in refusing to accept the Fields medal." From the article: "The Fields Medal, like the Nobel Prize, grew, in part, out of a desire to elevate science above national animosities. German mathematicians were excluded from the first I.M.U. congress, in 1924, and, though the ban was lifted before the next one, the trauma it caused led, in 1936, to the establishment of the Fields, a prize intended to be 'as purely international and impersonal as possible.'"
Is it so hard to understand that some people do things just because they love to, and don't like the burdens that come with fame?
You have got the wikipedia link wrong. You meant: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman
satisfaction in knowing he was right ?
narcissm and wealth isnt important to everyone (i know this is probably hard for indoctrinated Americans to understand)
good for him i say
not necessarily for his typical genius mathematician nutty professor image (from which this behavior seems to stem; see Einstein's quick switch from young stud to crazy haired geek, on purpose), but because of the interest it seems to be reawakening in Mathematics.
I used to carry a bottle of whiskey for snake bite. And two snakes. -Nefarious Wheel
I have discovered a truely marvelous demonstration of the Poincaré conjecture that this blog is too narrow to contain.
The Fields Medal, like the Nobel Prize, grew, in part, out of a desire to elevate science above national animosities.
And dynamite. Pretty much the coolest invention ever. I don't know why anyone wouldn't list that first.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
I thought he was a church pastor living in Ravenholm... huh... learn something new everyday.
I guess solving one of the most puzzling mathematical conjectures in history kinda makes everything else seem dim by comparison...now he just wants someone to have a beer with.
Maybe he refused it 'cuz he didn't want to look like an untouchable.
The heavens do not fall for such a trifle.
Damn! He is OLD!
---- "XML is like violence. If it doesn't fix the problem, you aren't using enough."
I was reading the article on the Poincaré conjecture, and went to another tab, and when I came back, I thought I was still on the Perelman page. I am sorry about that.
---- "XML is like violence. If it doesn't fix the problem, you aren't using enough."
A Chinese mathematician with a history of "borrowing" or "aggregating" other people's research is trying to take credit for something a Russian mathematician has done. When the Poincare chip is produced, they'll mask over P for Perelman and insert a Y for Yau...until enough people scream....and then the Chinese government will indignantly run Yau out of town...
The more things change....
He already has enough money, his work is enough recognition for him and he is tired of the math community.
at the university that I studied my PhD. He was Chinesse, and he made his research/teaching assistants carry his hand-bag. And later he was kicked out of the university, because he was forcing his assistants to give $200-$300 of their salaries back to him as cash. He was threatening to end their assistantship such that they would have to go back to China, since they sponsor their graduate program via their asistantship...
This Yau fella sounds just like him.
Give it a rest, Yau.
I find the parallels between Perelman's proof of Thurston's Conjecture and Wiles proof of Fermat to be compelling:
Obviously the standing of Wiles and Perelman in the mathematical community couldn't be more different. Lets hope Perelman accepts an academic position somewhere so he can carry on his work with the honor he deserves.
The attempts by the Chinese to claim proof of Poincare is disgusting.
an ill wind that blows no good
Eliminating politics by refusing to actively participate in them!
What an impressive joy to read about the man. He helps build my faith in humanity.
These Professional math guy are odd ducks. There is now telling why he did or did not do something. Who really cares in the end? The math establishment..that's about it. I'm sure most people don't know how much politics actually take place in math and science. It's not hard to imagine this guys wants nothing to do with these people. Just see how they freaked out in mock horror that he would not take their uber prise. Just let him solve his math problems and be happy...I know I will be happy whether or not he takes it.
http://mitbbs.com/mitbbs_article_t.php?board=Mathe matics&gid=10840706&ftype=0
I'll paste just the English version here so everybody can have a look:
====
From Dan Stroock at MIT:
Clarification
I, like several others whom Sylvia Nasar interviewed, am shocked and angered by the article which she and Gruber wrote for the New Yorker. Havingseen Yau in action during his June conference on string theory, Nasar ledme to believe that she was fascinated by S-T Yau and asked me my opinionabout his activities. I told her that I greatly admire Yau's efforts tosupport young Chinese mathematicians and to break down the ossifiedpower structure in the Chinese academic establishment. I then told her that I sometimes have doubts about his methodology. In particular, I toldher that, at least to my ears, Yau weakens his case and lays himself opento his enemies by sounding too self-promoting. As it appears in her article, she has purposefully distorted my statementand made it unforgivably misleading. Like the rest of us, Yau has hisfaults, but, unlike most of us, his virtues outweigh his faults.Unfortunately, Nasar used my statement to bolster her casethat the opposite is true, and for this I cannot forgive her.
====
From Michael Anderson at Stony Brook:
Dear Yau,
I am furious, and completely shocked, at what Sylvia Nasar wrote. Her quote of me is completely wrong and baseless. There are other factual mistakes in the article, in addition to those you pointed out. I have left her phone and email messages this evening and hope to speakto her tomorrow at the latest to clear this up. I want her to remove this statement completely from the article. It serves no purpose and contains no factual information; I view it as stupid gossip unworthy of a paper like the New Yorker. At the moment, the print version has not appeared and so it might be possible to fix this still. I spent several hours with S. Nasar on the phone talking about Perelman, Poincare , etc but it seems I was too naive and I'm now disgusted in believing this journalist would report factually. I regret very much this quote falsely attributed to me and will do whatever I can to have it removed. I will keep you informed as I know more.
Yours, Michael
====
More clarification from Anderson:
Many of you have probably seen the New Yorker article by Sylvia Nasar and David Gruber on Perelman and the Poincare conjecture. In many respects, its very interesting and a pleasure to read. However,it contains a number of inaccuracies and downright errors. I spent several hours talking with Sylvia Nasar trying to dissuade her from incorporating the Tian-Yau fights into the article, since it was completely irrelevant and I didn't see the point of dragging readers through the mud . Obviously I was not successful. The quote attributed to me on Yau is completely inaccurate and distortedfrom some remarks I made to her in a quite different context; I made itexplicit to her that the remarks I was making in that context were purely speculative and had no basis in fact. I did not give her my permission to quote me on this, even with the qualification of speculation. There are other inaccuracies about Stony Brook. One for instance is theimplication that Tian at MIT was the first to invite Perelman to the USto give talks . This is of course false - we at Stony Brook were the first to do so. I stressed in my talks with her the role Stony Brook played,yet she focusses on the single talk Grisha gave at Princeton, listing a collection of eminent mathematicians, none of whom is a geometer/topologist. I was not given an opportun
So basically it's one man in front of an egomaniacal tank of Yau ... familiar picture that is.
there is no issue with my network
Perelman did not leave his position at the Steklov Institute as the article suggests, but rather, he was not allowed to return to his position. I believe that he already had a fairly reclusive and modest personality, and as was pointed out by the Sydney Morning Herald, the extremity of this nature was prompted when the faculty of the Steklov Institute declined to re-elect him as a member; his peers and close colleagues rejected him, the paper quotes a friend as saying that Perelman was made to feel as an "absolutely ungifted and untalented person". Wikipedia has more, saying that this stemmed "apparently in part out of continuing doubt over his claims regarding the geometrization conjecture".
There are few things more bitter than being betrayed by one, let alone a majority or all of your associates. I know all too well how that kind of utterly profound pain can easily turn one of your greatest passions in life (be it a pursuit or a person) into a source for nothing other than misery.
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
The examples are always about doughnuts and coffee cups.
I could figure it out after a morning breakfast.
Grigori Perelman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman
gri, not gre
The entire article felt like the author wanted to sensationalize the internal politics within the Mathematical community. I would doubt Dr. Yau is half as terrible as the article makes him out to be. Of course in order to make this an interesting we need a despicable antogonist to go up against our beloved math genius. I thought the article was terribly written, but the more I read it, the more it made me want to hate Dr. Yau. I usually get that feeling from a partisan political story.
Perelman will be the one that goes down in history as the one that solved the conjecture to a satisfactory degree, no matter who else releases papers that pretend that his work was incomprehensible. That sort of argument doesn't really stand up very well, anyway; if it were easy to understand, it's likely someone would have trivially solved it earlier. The Chinese may very well have an army of extremely competent mathematicians, and two or three of them may have cleaned up Perelman's work to be a little more friendly to the mathematics community at large, but I suspect that Perelman will be the name that everyone remembers.
He's done his bit, people will remember him, and he'll get to work on more mathematics. He doesn't care, so I don't think we should care either. On to the next (apparently) intractable problem!
I would consider Yau's attitude, if the New Yorker piece is accurate, to be academic fraud, plagarism and the wilfull falsifying of results - any of which are severe enough in academia to warrant the nullification of previous awards, even if these took place afterwards. There have, in fact, been cases where doctorates have been revoked by the awarding University in England as a result of later scholarly abuses. They are certainly sufficiently serious that any professional mathematical society to which Yau belongs should investigate matters for possible disciplinary action should they be true.
(Sure, you can't do much. The military can court-martial, the Government can haul you off to Gitmo, but the mathematician's union is a little more limited. They could probably ban him from conferences they specifically held, and they could probably lean on journals to be more careful in refereeing his work, but that's about it. Well, actually, given his ego, they could probably take out an ad in a major Chinese newspaper, satirizing him. That could probably do him more damage than any official action.)
Personally, I think the Fields medal should have been awarded to Perelman specifically BECAUSE he refused it. They can't make him accept it - but that's what Swiss bank safety deposit boxes are for. On the other hand, they need to make it clear - to him and to everyone else - that mathematics is about truth, and truth has nothing to do with who accepts what. If a proof is correct, then it is correct and that is the end of the matter. Neither politics nor personalities have any say in it.
Furthermore, yes, it does turn him somewhat into a figurehead. And which would YOU prefer to be the role-model for all future mathematicians - the egomaniac or the gentleman? I'd argue that the sciences (and I include maths as a science) need to emphasise honesty, integrity and quality. Most here are computer programmers, or at least familiar with programming, so it would perhaps make sense to liken this to code. Would you rather a program work right (even if it's hard to understand), or be broken and/or stolen (even if it's made easy)? (I'll let you pick which OS' I am referring to, and which one I believe to be inherently superior.)
Perelman's proofs might be "high magic" in the coder's sense of being so hard very few (to none) can understand it, but I fail to see why that should be a problem. If anything, it is proof of the quality of his intellect and instinct. Those who reject that which they cannot understand are superstitious peasents. (Ok, that's a bit of a troll, but it's also true. You cannot learn that which you already understand, so it is only by not understanding that you are capable of learning. Thus, only the intelligent admit ignorance and only the ignorant claim certainty.)
Yau has claimed that he does not understand the proof. So where does the problem lie - with pto proof or Yau? Well, obviously Yau. If the problem was the proof, then Yau could establish where the error was that resulted in the proof being nonsense. The inability to establish such a proof does not mean that Perelman's work is perfect, only that it is beyond Yau to make any claims about it whatsoever. Were I to write a flawless program in raw assembly, would flaws magically apear if someone who could not read assembly state that it was incomprehensible to them? That would be stupid.
This entire dispute cuts to the heart of ALL theoretical and practical sciences and SHOULD be examined in depth by all official bodies with any degree of say in the matter. Perelman should NOT be permitted to walk away and play victim. If he is a victim of academic fraud, then academia has a responsib
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The article may be biased but you can always discern some truth.
1. Perelman is unconcerned with fame and praise.
2. Yau is concerned with fame and praise.
3. Perelman did most the finishing work on the Poincaire conjecture.
4. Yau and co. released a paper on Perelman's work with only passing mention of Perelman.
5. Perelman feels scorned and isolated.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
ROFL
My english is sow-sow. Sowhat?
25% Perelman
30% Yau & Co.
Yau himself never said this. It's another renown Chinese mathematician (named Yang, Le) that was quoted by a Chinese jornalist. I guess journalists all over the world are just the same: they keep misquoting people. Hard to imagine a real mathematician would make this kind of stupid mistake. This quote has actually become a well-known joke on the journalists on Chinese web-forums and blogs.
If we Americans don't all do anything and everything we can to be famous, the terrorists win.
Being on the cover of TV Guide alongside Jennifer Anniston is the most important thing any True American Patriot can aspire to.
What happens to us in the afterlife if we die without ever being recognised on the street and having our autographs sought by preteen girls?
I don't know about you, but if I'm not featured in a Paris Hilton homemade sex tape that becomes the number one most-downloaded torrent in history, before I reach retirement age, I'm going to have to renounce my citizenship.
So think of the children...oh, won't somebody please think of the children?
High level math books rarely get updated. My topology book was 16 years old, the differential geometry book 20. There isn't enough volume to justify a new press run, plus they would have to reconsider how much information to include and fix the mistakes. The proffessor I had just had us write in the corrections. Its also why the 20 year old book still costed $125.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I did just crack open Munkres to check, second edition in 2000, and my Intro to Diff Manifolds book had a new edition in 2005. The old standby Do Carmo is still hovering back in the 80s, though, and if Munkres mentions Poincaré it's only in passing (plus, what, two editions in 25 years?). You're right, of course, just a bit bitter about dropping $385 on texts today, hehe, two of which just reprinted so I have mismatched editions.
To many of us involved in the field, this article is right on. Yau has done great work and remains a dynamic force in the field. But as he has advanced from his prime years he has focused more and more on administration rather than mathematics, in an attempt to stay relevant (not unheard of in the sciences and maths). The article accurately portrays him as a man who now finds reward in the political machinations of his field rather than the joy of discovery.
He remains brilliant and is adept at his new focus, which makes him dangerous. The Fields Medal and Harvard platform give him a lot of power to retaliate against people he perceives as enemies to his legacy. And he has a chip on his shoulder...ok he's always had a chip on his shoulder but in the old days he'd satisfy it by the maths, not by this sort of dirty pool.
I for one would never speak up against him with my name signed to it. I don't blame (or envy) Mike or Dan for the damage control they're faced with now that what they thought were private remarks have been made public. But it doesn't change the accuracy of the story. Off the record there are few in the field who would disagree with saying that Yau and his students are making an unwarranted grab for credit that is not theirs. But confronting Yau on the record is not smart unless you've got a Fields and Ivy professorship yourself (fat chance that for me).
... Napolean Dynamite replies.
The article tells only part of the story. I cannot claim I know the whole story. One has to know what is going on in the Chinese academic community to understand why this happened. Hopefully some chinese academics on the board will help to shed more light on this situation. I happened to work with an alum of Peking University who gave me some insights into the world of Chinese politics. I will try to tell my understanding of the full story. Dr. Yau is a very talented and prolific mathematitian. He made major contributions to several fields of Math and Physics. He educated tens of grad students (many of them are professors at top schools) and won almost every prize in Math. He is probably a better mathematician than Grisha Perelman will ever be. From what i hear from my co-worker Dr.Yau has always wanted to be known as top Chinese mathematician or even scientist, the "king". Here a post from a chinese bbs i found though google. ----- Stage 0: Poincare, the prophet, told people that there exists a tunnel which would go from this side of the mountain to the other side of the mountain. Stage 1: Poincare announced that he found a mistake and that the tunnel he found could not go through the mountain but maintained his belief that there still exists such a tunnel yet to be found. This conjectured tunnel was then named "Tunnel of Poincare". Stage 2: Many pioneers went out trying to find such a tunnel but failed. However, some of them (Stallings, Zeeman, Smale, Freedman) did find similar tunnels in other mountains. Stage 3: Perelman, the monk, told people that he had found Tunnel of Poincare in the mountain that Poincare himself failed, and that he laid out 30 trail marks at various places in the tunnel so that other people could go through by themselves. Stage 4: Cao and Zhu were teamed up as an expedition to explore the feasibility of Perelman's tunnel. They were able to go through indeed and they laid out more than 300 trail marks along the tunnel which eases the pass greatly. Stage 5: Yau, the king, announced that the ultimate discovery of Poincare Tunnel was finally made by Cao and Zhu, and emphasized the importance of the "Perelman Method" (called by Cao-Zhu "Hamilton and Perelman's Ricci flow theory"). Stage 6: Celebration. ------ However, the Chinese academic establishment (my friend referred to them as the Peking University camp) considers him as an outsider. Yau has been trying to attack the opposition be claiming that his grad students are better mathematicians than the "corrupt" academics from the PKU camp. He just needed some major result for a PR stunt. Perelman just happened to come up with his proof in the wrong time. After reading the article one might think that Yau tried to get some credit for proving the conjecture. Yau never actually tried to claim that he proved the conjecture. But he did try to steal some of Perelman's fame for his students to show that under his guidance chinese mathematicians can produce world class results. However, what was meant to be a local PR trick spilt arcoss the borders and ended up in New Yorker. The Yau camp is strong too, by the way. The article was posted a couple of days ago and every blog that linked it has anonymous postings with emails supporting Yau, e.g. see a few posts above.
"He is probably a better mathematician than Grisha Perelman will ever be"
When I read the aforementioned statement, you lost all credibility. You are discrediting your thesis with such a biased opinion. Yes, Yau is a great mathematician, but so is Perelman.
Anyhow, most of your post is copy-paste of ramblings from some random BBS. It doesn't seem to have much substance.
the "motivational" differences he describes for Yau's politicing is interesting, but if it still amounts to taking undo credit for the work it's not justified although perhaps migitgated to some minor degree.
It's funny to read about poeple doing "things just because they love to" in context of Perelman, who barely earns enough to buy a decent suite and a dinner.
I finished "TFA" and was impressed with the writing. It was full of all kinds of quotes, facts, etc. I was impressed with the quality of the article as opposed to the slop put out by mainstream media (my wife reads the New Yorker but I just browse for the cartoons).
Then I was reading what someone posted with rebuttals from the egg-heads they interviewed crying foul--evidently, their words were twisted into convenient quotes to support the thesis of the article--which seemed to be that Perelman is a nice guy and Yao is an unethical bastard.
I was very disappointed but not surprised that journalists do this. Several times, I have been interviewed by newspaper writers for small and large cities. On each occassion, the quotes were grossly inaccurate or fictional altogether.
I've always suspected that "journalists" usually already have the story written and they're just out to find convenient quotes to prove their theories "correct."
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
Prizes pander to human ego and superficial pride. A couple of quotes from history.
..."
"Prizes are for children." Charles Ives, quoted upon being awarded, but refusing, the Pulitzer prize.
Or maybe even more apropos is Albert Einstein's quote:
"... But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever
What do old Mathematicians do, they can't all become academics, administrators and/or actuaries...
What do old computer scientist do, they can't all become academics, managers and/or administrators...
Youth is wasted on the young.
I thought an Engineering degree and computer science work would be applied enough and be structured enough to look like a reasonable career choice. It is not I am still looking for something that will suit me better, should I have shot for the moon, done pure maths and ended up a school teacher (not a well respected or well paid position in these parts. My father had the same choice having been best in his school at mathematics, there were few computers in 1960, so he followed in his fathers footsteps and did medicine, maybe my recently born kid can follow his star, shine brightly and live on welfare after his short bright career fades.
Be Free: Free Software Tuition
Perelman is right to refuse the medal. Why he, the mathemetician, who will forever be the part of human history, who solved one of the main problems of science, accept a medal from some king? And go for it in a remote country?
Nobody but a wilfull participant in intellectual fraud would - today - contend that he discovered the laws of motion (he plagarised them off Descartes) or calculus (Gottfried Leibniz produced the modern version and published before Newton, Archimedes was the original discoverer although it is very unlikely either Newton or Leibniz was aware of the earlier work).
Nobody but a fool would deny that Newton's pressure to obliterate the wave theory of light set optical science back many centuries, and that his hostility towards others caused serious enough rifts that collaboration between Europe and Britain, or between British scientists, was seriously inhibited for a long time after his death, retarding science in general.
Does that make Newton any less of a great scientist? No. Does it devalue the Principa? No. So why, if this holds true of Newton can it not hold true of Yau? Why, if we can accept that Newton had serious character flaws that led to intellectual fraud, forgery, deceit and political manipulation for his own ends, can we not accept that an equally brilliant but equally troubled intellect would suffer the same flaws?
Furthermore, since a genius HAS exceptional intelligence, should we not hold them to a higher standard of conduct, rather than a lesser one? Particularly in modern times, where most such flaws are easily treatable?
(Incidently, since I am drawing parallels with Newton, does this mean I believe Newton should have his knighthood revoked? Actually, yes. He has no business holding credit where that credit is not due but was acquired through malpractice.)
As for accessibility - that is of no consequence to the matter at hand, which is a matter of who discovered what. Clarifying is not the same as discovering. Clarifying is a continuous process that starts from the moment of discovery and will never stop. Original discovery only happens once - otherwise it ceases to be original - and the issue at hand is the originality of the discovery, not whether it is readable.
Sure, "human nature" is inevitable, being humans. However, that begs the question of what is human nature. Most philosophers over time seem to agree that character flaws and delusions are largely optional. (This does not include chemical imbalances, which are optional today only insofar as treatments exist.) Professor Nash, for example, was fortunate. He suffers from schizophrenia but when he was diagnosed, treatments did exist. Not very good ones, sure, but they worked. Einstein was not so fortunate, predating the ability to diagnose - never mind treat - his disorders. Newton (paranoid schizophrenic, possibly bipolar as well) is a mixed bag - his temper tantrums and disorderly conduct are generally forgiven as the consequences of his condition(s), but neither the conditions he had nor any other conditions known to exist can be used to excuse him of the other charges. Paranoia may make you suspicious of others, but it doesn't make you rob them.
Yau - well, he hasn't the excuse of Einstein or Newton, even as far as such excuses went. If he has a personality disorder, he is electing - entirely of his own free will - not to treat it. Such defects are no longer an excuse, they have become a choice (at least, if you have money) and so cannot be used to justify behaviour. Nobody of Yau's stature can claim ignorance or lack of resources. The alternative - that there is no defect to treat and his actions are concious and deliberate - hardly exonerates him.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
This article is great, wether accurate or misleading, biased or not. Reveling (or inventing) the human stories behind great discoveries is really interesting...
Yes, I have to agree with pedantic bore's translation:
Michael T. Anderson (SUNY at Stony Brook) probably thought that he would not be quoted, that his ideas were going to be presented without a direct link to his name. As I'll explain he seems to have had enough motives to use this opportunity to execute his own vendetta against Shing-Tung Yau (Harvard) by instigating reporters to deviate from main topic of the Poincaré Conjecture and Thurston's Geometrization conjecture to an indictment of Yau, and his work.
In my opinion there is little doubt that the article by Gruber and Nasar is grossly biased against Shing-Tung Yau, and to a lesser extent to his collaborators, including Richard S. Hamilton (Columbia). However I don't think that it is correct to blame only the reporters for this. I believe in spite of claims that the quotes are inaccurate, out-of-context, ... they are probably correct. It is common for reporters to face such claims and professionals are normally prepared for possible denials. In fact, we might find out that everything said in this case is recorded on tape.
If we are willing to assume that the quotes are correct, then the question remains: why Nasar and Gruber came up with an article so denigrating of Yau, Hamilton, and/or Chinese mathematics? Most likely they were led into this direction by the people they interviewed.. This does not completely clear them, since they did fail miserably in investigating the possible reasons those interviewed had for badmouthing Shing-Tung Yau and his collaborators.
I'll present just one single example to make my point. To some in the field it has been known that for many years Mike Anderson had also been behind proving Thurston's Geometrization Conjecture, and hence Poincaré's Conjecture. He wrote several extremely long papers and claimed to have proved the conjecture. People were a little suspicious about Anderson's work mainly because it did not involve any new ideas, and because it was so long and almost repetitive. To honor what appeared to be a tremendous achievement by Michael T. Anderson, Shing-Tung Yau, in a very generous and friendly gesture promised to dedicate at least one issueof the Journal of Differential Geometry [JDG] in its entirety exclusively to Anderson's work. Yau is the Editor-in-Chief of this prestigious publication. In contrast with Perelman's choice, Anderson did not post his articles at arxiv.org, or made them very widely available. After the announcements and celebrations the review process started in secrecy, Anderson was probably afraid somebody might fix his gaps and find and fix errors, forcing him to share the honor. However after a few months problems appeared with Anderson's work. Whether they were serious or not is not for me to say. But Yau reluctantly decided that Anderson's work was not up to the high standards of the JDG, and explicitly told him to look for another place to publish his work. Assuming he could fix it.
Mike Anderson sincerely believed he had solved the problem of the century. He even had a celebration at the end of his sequence of summer lectures at Stony Brook, with food and champagne. Peter Zograf (Steklov Mathematical Institute, Saint Petersburg), Dennis Parnell Sullivan (CUNY), and other well known mathematicians were present. Some where privately a little skeptic, but they honored Anderson anyway. After having received all this recognition, and in spite of the existence of objections by the referee, it was probably very hard for Anderson to swallow Yau's refusal to allow his paper to appear in the Journal of Differential Geometry, probably the most prestigious publication for geometers. Anderson appealed Yau's decision. He even tried to get other mathematicians to intercede. But Yau did not see any reasons to change his opinion. At that moment Anderson might have felt that Yau was acting "as a king" b
However I found the comment by helveticon very insightful. Such feuds are not uncommon in the academic environment, however in this case it surprises me even less. I know Stony Brook is a particularly wild place, where anything goes, in particular at the Math Department. After all ...
- Can you name a math department with a professor collecting salary while serving time in a California penitentiary?
- Can you name a place where the faculty will insist in putting a convicted sexual criminal in the classroom?
- Can you name a place where a professor smokes pot in his office, while
classes are in session nearby?
In case you were not able to guess, the answers are- STONY BROOK
- STONY BROOK
- STONY BROOK
To avoid missunderstandings I guess I should clarify that it is not professor Anderson. However I don't think I need to write the name of the professorshttp://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/html/id.phtml ?id=11618&fChrono=1
According to this genealogy page, both Michael Thomas Anderson and Shing-Tung Yau attended the University of California Berkeley.
And this is not all, both of them had the SAME supervisor: H. Blaine (Herbert) Lawson, Jr.
This is amazing!!
Also, in order not to damage the reputation of other departments, more complete answers to the questions posed above are:
http://englishrussia.com/?p=250
They gave him a new dress...