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Perelman Urged To Accept $1m Prize
krou writes "The Warm Home charity in St. Petersburg, Grigory Perelman's home-town, has urged the math genius and recluse to accept the $1m Millennium Prize for solving the Poincaré conjecture, and donate it to charities. Perelman has refused to accept the award, telling one reporter through the closed door of his flat, 'I have all I want,' and another who managed to call him on his mobile, 'You are disturbing me. I am picking mushrooms.'"
Patron saint of basement dwellers everywhere.
Maybe leave the guy alone like he wants?
Is a total badass, he sets the standard for life.
Maybe try his facebook.
They don't make recluses like they used to.
Now I know how he figured it out at least. He went out, picked magic mushrooms, ate them and let the universe tell him the answer. No wonder he doesn't want the prize, it should be given to the great mushroom spirits.
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
He probably wants nothing more than being left alone. It's ironic that he doesn't seem to grasp that his eccentric behavior makes that even more difficult to achieve.
Attitudes make the difference between Space and Time: we want to MAX our temporal, and MIN our spatial extension.
This latest snub follows his refusal in 2006 to collect the maths equivalent of an Oscar, the Fields Medal.
Its sad that the Fields medal is being compared to the Oscars - don't get me wrong, the Oscars are high honors in their fields - but comparing the lifetime of dedication scientists and mathematicians put into their work to the winner of 'Best miniskirt on hot actress in a running scene' doesn't seem right.
Yeah. I mean I used my car to totally kick ass in last years Boston Marathon. I finished it in like 15 minutes. The officcial were real d-bags though and refused to declare me the winner.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
He's rejecting it on principled grounds. Regardless of what you think about those principles, he simply can't do this just for short term charity.
When he rejected the Field's medal, he simply said to the effect of, "If I take the money, I'd be obligated to correct the wrongs I see, otherwise I'd be a hypocrite. I don't want to be the one making that crusade, so I have to reject the money." (Remember the scene in Thank You For Not Smoking?) It's a simple, logical response. He may be a recluse and all, but there's nothing strange about his refusal to take the money.
Beetle B.
Refusing a $1 million prize will, I suspect, generate more, of the attention he doesn't want.
The journalists camped outside his home and calling his cell phone don't give a crap about some obscure piece of mathematics - they care about the weirdo who is turning down a fortune.
If he's jobless and living with his family, the least the foundation could do is contact his family and ask if they'd like the money for rent, food, etc. They're essentially paying for his work and even if he doesn't want the prize, they could give it to his family quietly so he can continue to do his work without someone having to worry about rent.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Quit bothering the guy already.
He's sensible enough to know that if he accepts, people will want him to give speeches, attend talks, and will generally waste his time. Feynman once pointed out that winning a Nobel Prize meant that he heard from many people he really didn't want to talk to. Feynman sometimes gave talks under a pseudonym, so that only the people really interested in the subject matter would show up.
Disturb him some more and he might never submit another of his solutions to the world.
and another who managed to call him on his mobile, 'You are disturbing me. I am picking mushrooms.'
Just check the weather in St.Petersburg, Russia. It is still too cold there for any mushrooms to grow. So much for journalist's integrity.
Will: Oh, come on! What? Why is it always this? I mean, I fuckin' owe it to myself to do this or that. What if I don't want to?
Chuckie: No. No, no no no. Fuck you, you don't owe it to yourself man, you owe it to me. Cuz tomorrow I'm gonna wake up and I'll be 50, and I'll still be doin' this shit. And that's all right. That's fine. I mean, you're sittin' on a winnin' lottery ticket. And you're too much of a pussy to cash it in, and that's bullshit. 'Cause I'd do fuckin' anything to have what you got. So would any of these fuckin' guys. It'd be an insult to us if you're still here in 20 years. Hangin' around here is a fuckin' waste of your time.
<b> mine.
I think Perelman is not so much a weirdo, but an aesthetic artist of sorts--he's been hurt by the fact that humans have tried to monetize something he considers to be beautiful...as if you could place a price on Shakespeare or a price-tag on Emily Dickinsons' poems.
"Seriously man, take the million."
I suspect that in Russia, as in other places, large amounts of cash, even if given away, attracts the attention of all sorts of unwelcome characters. The government with taxes; receiving the reward leads to paperwork which if not everything is in order can lead to huge repercussions, like jail time. Criminals who will only hear you received a lump sum, not that you gave it away. Reporters who are only bothering you now but will instead be critical of how you spent the money or attack your decison making (why that charity?). Charities for not being on the receiving end of your generosity. Pesky social people wanting to get a piece, such as women or men (depending on how you spin, and maybe the 'or' should be an 'and') showing up, despite you being in a happy relationship already, maybe even disrupting that.
Right now he's an interesting story. If he accepts the million, he's an interesting story and rich, and the additional story of what he does with the million becomes a reality.
Hell, when the economy went to shit here in the US, just look at the nasty backlash online, even here on /.; people were attacking ALL upper class simply because they were rich, not because they had done wrong. It was guilt by association.
Maybe this recluse has his reasons and understands the world far better than you know.
Here's my theory. He's a genius, a madman and a recluse, as well as everything else people say about him plus one other note: a mushroom farmer. 1$ million probably isn't even worth his time to open the door. "I have all I want" pretty much sums it up. Take your paltry 1$ million and donate it to an appropriate charity. If you really want a minute of his precious time you'll probably have to raise the figure by a couple orders of magnitude.
He must not be married. If I turned down a mil, my wife would kill me, dig me back up, kill me again, film it all, and sell the film rights to recoup it.
Table-ized A.I.
...or own a digital watch!?
I dunno, I still think they're a "pretty neat idea".
Homonyms are fun!
You're driving your car, but they're riding their bikes there.
When I use that excuse to justify my interest in Thai prostitutes they call me insane. When I use that excuse on slashdot they call me a troll.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Isn't he in MORE danger by not accepting the money? Once he has it and gives it away, he can not get it back, so criminals have nothing to extort from him. But as long as he has the ability to collect and doesn't, he's a prime target: "listen, stupid, collect the cash and give it to us, or we'll hurt you and your family".
Jumping off a cliff does not take courage, it takes cowardice.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
Because he is courageous enough to reject $1m. Are you?
No, but I'm so heroic I've managed to reject the temptation to sleep with Natalie Portman. That's WAY more heroic!
This bit is more about our personal dissatisfaction with our lives, as the readers, having to do things we don't like for money. It's more about a dissatisfaction with the economic system and less about this mathematician, or ex-mathematician. This dissatisfaction leads us to react to any declination of money with shock. The real key to freedom is living with very little and very humbly such that we "work" less and live more enjoyably, where "work" is here defined as any activity done more for money and less for personal enjoyment.
Even Richard M. Stallman himself has suggested this:
"I live like a student, basically. And I like that, because it means that money is not telling me what to do."
-- Richard M. Stallman
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/fsfs/rms-essays.pdf
Pg. 164
Ah, never mind, you're probably not smart enough to take the money.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
What the comity could do is take the million and invest it at say 3%. Create a new price called the Perelman price and give the interests away to the winner every 5 years.
Does Perelman not taking the money scare you?
Does he offend you?
Does he entice a violent reaction in you?
Do you hate it, when someone sticks out of the crowd not out of a desire to be more 'cool looking' but simply because he does not need the crowd?
Take the money and give it to charity, you self-important Shit
- why don't you go and find him and beat him into submission to your own standards, that will hopefully satisfy your primordial craving to make sure nobody is different and whoever is different they are destroyed, so that the coherency of the group is in balance yet again?
You can't handle the truth.
He solved the conjecture, his name will be in math books for the rest of eternity, and that is prize enough for him.
I think you're either misunderstanding him, or replacing his wants by your own.
I think it's more like this: he solved the conjecture, and that is prize enough for him.
It may be a good life for him, and that's all he thinks he needs. But that may not be so true for the people who are providing for his needs.
No, I don't think he is providing for his needs (he doesn't look capable of doing it) - I think his mother and/or sister are/is.
So if it were up to me, I'd actually use the money to provide a monthly stipend to his mother and sister (for as long as Perelman continues to be supported by them).
Since he doesn't want the money, I think it's fair to give it to the ones who supported him, since without them he might not have survived to solve the problem.
IMO giving a monthly amount is better than a lump sum. Since it is more likely that Perelman would benefit in the long term.
I think it's also a good idea to give the mom and sister a one time sum of money as a gift - on top of that monthly amount.
$1m (1*10^-3) wouldn't be much of a prize and I'm not sure how you would collect it since it is only a tenth of a cent. The lowest denomination piece of US currency (the penny) is worth ten times that amount.
$1M (1*10^6) would be a nice prize though.