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.'"

Comments

Some people don't want to be famous

[QuantumFTL]

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?

Re:Some people don't want to be famous

[kfg]

Would he have gotten an article in the New Yorker by quietly accepting?

Probably not, but he would have gotten one in the New York Times. It isn't so easy to "quietly" accept.

And what is the answer for someone who does not wish fame, but does wish to contribute, and so begins to gather fame for eschewing fame? I've you've got the answer, please let me know, I haven't found it in decades of trying. Neither has Salinger. The best you can do is moderate your notoriety; and hide.

If he didn't want the medal he could have just shut the hell up, but then we wouldn't have the solution.

"There are better men than Diogones, but nobody has ever heard of them."

KFG

Re:Some people don't want to be famous

[L7_]

The article in the New Yorker is more about the dispicable effort that Yau made to get his name on the Hamilton-Perelman proof than actually discussing Perelman's effort to remain fame-free. "The chinese made a 30% contribution and Perelman only a 25% one."

If the way that he is rejecting the Field's Medal is what he concluded it would take to expose the efforts of Yau and Co. to get recognition for work that they did not do, then he is going about it in a good way. The article itself is more an expose into the workings of credit in the world of mathematics than the rejection itself.

Re:Some people don't want to be famous

[klenwell]

My favorite quote from the article:

"There are a lot of students of high ability who speak before thinking," Burago said. "Grisha was different. He thought deeply. His answers were always correct. He always checked very, very carefully." Burago added, "He was not fast. Speed means nothing. Math doesn't depend on speed. It is about deep."

The Academy (not to mention Slashdot!) could use a few more people like this.

Re:Some people don't want to be famous

[junglee_iitk]

... hiding in plain sight probably works better.

Am I the only geek to doubt this?

Re:Some people don't want to be famous

[pallmall1]

Just the pride of solving an open problem like that is enough.

I agree. Perelman knows he's the one who solved it. The world knows Perelman solved it. And all the mathematicians know in their hearts that he solved it, even Yau. Yau may try to deny Perelman's accomplishment, and may even gain some material rewards he does not truly deserve. But those hollow victories and the methods he used to obtain them will be what Yau is remembered for, while Perelman will be known as the man who proved the Poincare conjecture.

How's that for topology.

Re:Some people don't want to be famous

[brandonY]

Not that he's purposefully trying to build a mystique of genius, but if he were, this is the way he'd do it.

I agree. A good way to build a mystique of genius WOULD be to solve a very old, nigh-unsolvable, famous math problem. Why didn't I think of that?!

Re:Some people don't want to be famous

[rolfwind]

Maybe his sick mother lives with him.

After growing up, children living with parents may be a source of derision in America, but in some countries 2 or 3 generations living under one roof is not unusual. Not that I am saying Russia is one of these since I don't know much about Russia, but I believe it's time for people making these comments to grow up rather than the people in these type of situations -- afterall, not all of the instances are equal.

I salute Grigory

[PresidentEnder]

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.

grand, but not so grand

[User 956]

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.

Parallels between Wiles and Perelman

[amightywind]

I find the parallels between Perelman's proof of Thurston's Conjecture and Wiles proof of Fermat to be compelling:

• Both men benefited from ingenious strategic breakthough made by other men: The Frey Curve proposed by Gerhard Frey linked Fermat with Tanyama-Shimura, and the Ricci Flow idea Hamilton provided the basis for Perelman's deep refinements. Both ideas can be readily understood by laymen.
• Both men dragged the enabling idea over the line virtually alone fighting though unimaginable difficulty. (These are not easily understood by laymen!)

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.

Re:perhaps he has the best reward there is

[ScrewMaster]

i know this is probably hard for indoctrinated Americans to understand.

It's probably even harder for indoctrinated non-Americans to understand that the vast majority of Americans aren't particularly narcissistic, or remotely wealthy. At this point, in fact, the bulk of us are starting to get pretty damn sick and tired of both those SUV-driving narcissistic fuckwits that we have to contend with on the way to work every day, and judgmental foreigners that insist upon treating America (of all countries) as a monolithic culture.

But so far as refusing the prize is concerned, you're right, I'm sure he has that satisfaction. But, contrary to popular belief, the academic/scientific world is just as rife with dissent, personalities and politics as any other human endeavor. Consequently it's quite likely he refused the prize because he was pissed off about something or someone.

Re:perhaps he has the best reward there is

[DrMindWarp]

But, contrary to popular belief, the academic/scientific world is just as rife with dissent, personalities and politics as any other human endeavor.

It is reassuring to see someone state this every now and again. I must get a T-shirt printed.

Re:perhaps he has the best reward there is

[mrbooze]

What exactly is narcissistic or greedy about a person humbly accepting an honor accorded them by their peers? You don't even have to show up to politely say "Thank you, but I prefer not to be in the spotlight, please donate the award money to $CHARITY or $SCHOLARSHIP or $WHATEVER."

I wasn't indoctrinated by my American parents to be particularly narcissistic or greedy, but I was indoctrinated to be gracious when someone in good faith offers you a gift or award.

Not that I care about whether this particular guy wants an award or not, but the implication that all good-hearted folk would refuse to humbly accept awards or accolades is pretty goofy.

Re:Nothing to see here...

[Monty845]

The funny part is Perelman will be remembered in the field of mathematics as much for his integrity as for his accomplishment. Whereas Yau will probly be relegated to obscurity...

Honorable Guy.

[nonsequitor]

The article concluded that he refused the Field's Medal because of a lack of ethics surrounding who is credited with the work.

"As long as I was not conspicuous, I had a choice," Perelman explained. "Either to make some ugly thing"--a fuss about the math community's lack of integrity--"or, if I didn't do this kind of thing, to be treated as a pet. Now, when I become a very conspicuous person, I cannot stay a pet and say nothing. That is why I had to quit."

The article, while quite lengthy, describes how some of the Chinese, Yau and those who work for him, have been "fixing" people's proofs and claiming them as original work. Yau tried to do it again with Perelman's proof and got shot down, again. Considering that Yau is still a respected member of the Math community, Perelman does not want to belong to that community. It is nice to see some people in this world still have some integrity. Perelman refuses to make a fuss out of this, he's not in it for his own gain.

Re:Honorable Guy.

[Valdrax]

The article says that Perelman earned "more than enough" in America in his early career to last the rest of his life, but he's living with his mother on a diet consisting of "bread, cheese and milk." I doubt a extra cash is ever overlooked by someone that is frugal.

I disagree. If he is convinced that he has "enough," then he really means it. Even while living in America, he had to live an ascetic life to earn enough money to save up to pay for the rest of his life in Russia. To a person who had access to the sort of money to live a more extravagant life and who didn't in the past, a prize like this means nothing financially.

His needs are met. Any other raise in his standard of living is just more expense and more distraction. I envy people like this who can be happy with nothing but the basics.

I read that the main reason for his hermitage...

[TheNoxx]

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.

There's no controversy

[Dixie_Flatline]

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!

That is understandable.

[jd]

The situation here, though, is more complex I believe. Shing-Tung Yau seems to have deliberately turned mathematics from a relatively peaceful subject into a pieceful one, and Perelman seems utterly uninterested in having his emotions mauled for the sole purpose of gratifying a glory-seeker.

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

Re:That is understandable.

[otisaardvark]

I would consider Yau's attitude, if the New Yorker piece is accurate, to be academic fraud, plagarism and the wilfull falsifying of results

Your post is full of hyperbole and flamebait. There is no falsifying of results or fraud here. There is no plagiarism - sources are completely referenced and acknowledged. No-one doubts the immense value of Cao-Zhu's (or Morgan/Tian's) work as a exposition, especially given the sketchy nature of the arXiv preprints - the dispute centres around whether their own (and implicitly, Yau's) valuation of their contribution is justified.

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.

The notion of "correctness" of a proof is not always as clear-cut as you might think, because different things are obvious and taken as granted at different levels. Being able to prove is different to communicating a proof. Yau obviously takes the idea of accessibility of a proof seriously - which is no bad thing.

Yau is without question amongst the greatest geometers alive. He proved Calabi's conjecture about Ricci-flat metrics on kahler manifolds with zero first Chern class. He proved the positive energy theorem in general relativity. He proved Severi's conjecture (the complex projective version of the Poincare conjecture). He pioneered the use of methods from the analysis of elliptic differential equations in differential geometry. To use a programming analogy, what Yau claims happened would be like Andrew Morton submitting a kernel patch which Alan Cox was not able to understand. In these circumstances there is clearly a problem.

This is not to say that Yau has not blown the problem up out of all proportion. This does not negate his flaws of ego and wanting "too much credit". This does not excuse his ridiculous political games. This doesn't have anything to do with the fact that Yau probably isn't a very nice person. But you should realise that now the dust is settling nobody disputes the validity of the actual mathematics.

You can clearly see Yau's dismissive attitude in the slides of his own talk. But the dispute here is human, not scientific. Suggesting that the IMU should revoke Yau's Field's medal makes you sound like an idiot.

Re:Biased and Distorted Article

[Ruie]

Not that journalists haven't been known to manipulate a few words here and then, but these clarifications just do not sound as a solid rebuttal at all - more like politics. They dispute the attribution of the words, rather then their content and, at that, take care not to explicitly say "I really think the reverse of what was printed in the article".

Re:Perelman is like Linus!

[WilliamSChips]

You're kidding me, right? You may be right about Perelman but Linus has been political from day one.

Re:Michael Anderson Quote

[pedantic bore]

Translation: Anderson is afraid of Yau.

Fields medals stop at 40... [ageism]

[totierne]

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.