But the good news is that as I was reading the English version of the Russian newspaper Pravda earlier this week, I came across a story about a bona fide celebrity who despises celebrity and, frankly, doesn’t give a damn that people think he’s crazy. Although one would have to be crazy to call him crazy considering his celebrity derives from the fact that – in recent months – a number of reputable mathematical societies, including the European Mathematical Society and the International Congress of Mathematicians, have declared him the smartest man in the world (possessed, indeed, of A Beautiful Mind).
This celebrity-averse genius is Grigoriy Perelman. And he has won acclaim for finally solving the most famous open problem in mathematics known as the Poincaré Conjecture. But, since the quadratic formula could well have been Egyptian Hieroglyphics when I was fumbling through calculus, I shall suffice to note that in 1999, the Clay Mathematics Institute announced the Millennium Prize of one million dollars to anyone who could prove this conjecture. Because, it claimed:
There is universal agreement that a successful proof would constitute a landmark even in the history of mathematics, fully comparable with the proof by Andrew Wiles of Fermat’s Last Theorem, but possibly more far reaching.
But Perelman shocked the world when he turned down the $1 million and a host of other prestigious medals and prizes he was offered for his stellar achievement. And, here’s how he explained himself:
As long as I was not conspicuous, I had a choice. Either to make some ugly thing [to challenge what he perceived as the mathematic community’s lack of integrity] or…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.
Imagine that: shunning fame and fortune to preserve his integrity. But quit he did by abruptly abandoning his home in Budapest, Hungary to live with his elderly mother and half-sister – in relative obscurity and abject poverty – in an apartment in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Now, how’s that for a good lesson…?!
NOTE: Apropos grasping for celebrity, Al Gore just won’t go away. But whatever journalistic integrity ABC News had was lost on Wednesday when it featured this global-warming Cassandra in a program called “The Last Days on Earth”. Because in it, Gore warned the world that climate change, more than nuclear war or any other doomsday scenario, is the greatest danger facing mankind.
Click here to read my CNN column on this ABC News program and Gore’s fanciful prophecy….
Gregoriy Perelman Mathematician
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.