Science's Breakthrough of the Year

johkir writes "Last year, evolution was the breakthrough of the year; We found it full of new developments in understanding how new species originate. But we did get a complaint or two that perhaps we were just paying extra attention to the lively political/religious debate that was taking place over the issue, particularly in the United States. Perish the thought! Our readers can relax this year: Religion and politics are off the table, and n-dimensional geometry is on instead. This year's Breakthrough salutes the work of a lone, publicity-shy Russian mathematician named Grigori Perelman, who was at the Steklov Institute of Mathematics of the Russian Academy of Sciences until 2005. The work is very technical but has received unusual public attention because Perelman appears to have proven the Poincaré Conjecture (Our coverage from earlier this year), a problem in topology whose solution will earn a $1 million prize from the Clay Mathematics Institute. That's only if Perelman survives what's left of a 2-year gauntlet of critical attack required by the Clay rules, but most mathematicians think he will. There is also a page of runner-ups. Many of which have been covered here on Slashdot."

Comments

Re:Mathematics is "A" Science

[arevos]

Mathematics may be pure, but it's not a science. Science deals with explanations of natural events, known as theories, which can never be proven. Mathematics deals with logical deductions from a set of axioms. Science attempts to understand the axioms of the Universe through observations, whilst mathematics is about making observations about a base set of axioms. In many respects, mathematics works the opposite way around to science.