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.
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.
From what I can recall, his mother and sister are similarly minded as he himself is.
Thus, they too would refuse the money.
Is integrity such a rare thing these days, that everybody freaks the fuck out when they see it, call the person exhibiting it "Strange", and "Weird"?
Because that is what seems to be happening from my vantage point.
Seriously, just stop harassing the man. The doesn't want any prizes, additional prestige, or some fucking trophy for his wall. He solved the conjecture, his name will be in math books for the rest of eternity, and that is prize enough for him. Just leave him the fuck alone already.
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.
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.