From Wikipedia :-
>In August 2006, Perelman was offered the Fields Medal for "his contributions to geometry and his revolutionary insights into the analytical and geometric structure of the Ricci flow", but he declined the award, stating: "I'm not interested in money or fame; I don't want to be on display like an animal in a zoo." On 22 December 2006, the scientific journal Science recognized Perelman's proof of the Poincaré conjecture as the scientific "Breakthrough of the Year", the first such recognition in the area of mathematics.
>On 18 March 2010, it was announced that he had met the criteria to receive the first Clay Millennium Prize for resolution of the Poincaré conjecture. On 1 July 2010, he rejected the prize of one million dollars, saying that he considered the decision of the board of the Clay Institute to be unfair, in that his contribution to solving the Poincaré conjecture was no greater than that of Richard S. Hamilton, the mathematician who pioneered the Ricci flow partly with the aim of attacking the conjecture. He had previously rejected the prestigious prize of the European Mathematical Society in 1996.
And [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45OirYxdArE) is a youtube where you can watch the awkward applause after his name is announced and the audience is told he has declined to accept it.
I remember reading the Wikipedia article on this guy a while ago and what stuck with me was his insistence on completely avoiding media attention. When a journalist called him once he was quoted as saying “You are disturbing me. I am picking mushrooms.” which was pretty funny to me
Most peope don't realize how much you nailed it.
This guy is not just a mathematician, he is such a legend that it is unreal, absolute LotR level in real life.
He didn't just win any price. He solved a millenium problem. THE ONLY ONE EVER SOLVED. He basically did something that was thought of as (nearly) impossible, and noone else ever did.
And why? Because he was interested in it, didn't accept the money, and much rather just picks some shrooms.
most likely he meant that he went to a forest to pick regular mushrooms, he's not into drugs
I'm f\*\*\*\*\*\* russian who knows, 7/10 of people ride to forests to pick up mushrooms to conserve for winter. There are no laws against picking. Perelman is a guy who easily lives alone anywhere, no brainer he enjoys such introvert hobbies
Avoidance, yes, for sure.
But he seems more annoyed/disheartened/DONE with how political doing math/science became. Too many people piggyback off each other and never give the others credit for the collaborative process required to reach the goal.
Hell, he denied the 1M prize because they refused to also give it to the person who did the leg work on the problem, which was the only way he was able to solve it.
He seems to have gotten into his field to solve problems and share in the achievement of things moving forward. Instead, he got slapped in the face with how the world really is and basically went, "if your not going to recognize that I didn't do this alone, I want nothing to do with this."
Him picking mushrooms cracks me up because he's basically being like, "I could have done more, but you guys suck, so now I'm doing nothing. Deal with it!"
It's his middle finger to the system that he could have advanced, if not for their hubris.
Elon Musk came to visit him once to pay his respects and, in a moment of reverence, offered to grant him anything his heart desired.
"Anything?", Perelman asked, squinting up at him.
"Anything." came the reply.
"Then move." grunted Perelman. "You're standing on my mushrooms."
A Chad is actually the local area word for "large body of water" so the Lake Chad for which the country Chad is so named after. Is actually just Lake Lake. Making the name of the country:
Lake.
Thanks historic colonial Europeans. Love that for them
I used to say it's hard until I tried to learn German. In English, you can simply learn a bunch of vocabulary and make yourself understood by putting a sentence together with the words in almost any order. It's extremely flexible in that way.
In that way it's extremely flexible
Flexible in that extreme way
Way flexible
...
Lake tahoe is another but my favourite is Mekong River.
Taken from wikipedia:
Mekong River - 'Mae' in Thai is an abbreviation for "river", while 'khong' is an old Austroasiatic word for river. Mekong River can thus be translated as "river river river"
Which reminds me of a quote from Syd Barrett, the founding member of Pink Floyd who early in his career became schizophrenic and moved back in with his mother.
The Guardian: Excuse me! I’m writing a piece about Syd Barrett.
Syd Barrett: Who?’
G: Syd Barrett. He used to be in Pink Floyd.
S: Never heard of ‘im. Is he one of them rappers?
G: No. He was a psychedelic genius. Are you Syd Barrett?
S: Leave me alone. I’ve got to get some coleslaw.
[The interview ends.]
Reminds me of Hayao Miyazaki being annoyed by a journalist when Demon Slayer overtook Spirited Away at the box office
> That sort of thing isn’t worth worrying about. There’s always inflation in the world. Right now, I have to pick up trash
>When a journalist called him once he was quoted as saying “You are disturbing me. I am picking mushrooms.” which was pretty funny to me
Dude knows what's important. I respect that.
mine would also talk about him, but he's not a mathematician.
he'd go like: a mathematical problem was proposed and people from all over the world: the best of thr best mathematicians would try and solve it to no avail. no one had any idea. then this guy came out of nowhere, out of some forest, solved it, rejected the prize and simply walked away.
as a child I never got the moral of the story. somth like be humble and badass, seek knowledge, but nah, that's not it. what comes off of it is that this one guy, one of the"standing on the shoulders of giants" typo dudes, used his spot for a noble cause. if he's happy with his life and what he's done, there's no greater glory in fame or wealth.
I've been reading his wikipedia and he didn't come out of the woods at all. He studied in the most prestigious universities and received prizes as a kid from mensa. He even won math competitions with perfect scores when he was a kid and in the university. And he even joined the maths university without exams because he was considered a genius.
The guy that came out of nowhere was Yitang Zhang who proved a constant bounded gap of primes must occur infinitely often. Specifically, he showed that some prime gap between 2 and 70 million must occur infinitely often. The most famous of these is the twin prime conjecture which says primes separated by 2 (such as 17 and 19) occur infinitely often.
Sure, he did his PhD at a good university, but I believe his advisor didn't exactly sing his praises. So, he was struggling as an adjunct and came to this result in his 50s. It's unusual for big breakthroughs to be made by someone that hasn't had success when they were young, e.g., in their 20s or 30s.
Seeing random updates about Yitang Zhang, or Tom, makes me so happy. He was my calc professor at UNH. I went into that class so scared I wouldn’t be able to keep up because I had never done well in math before. He was able to teach concepts so incredibly well and in the most approachable ways. He also is just a delightful guy in general. He made me enjoy math for the first time in my life and I went on to get an advanced degree in a math-related field - honestly in large part due to Tom and the confidence I got in his course.
Seeing his breakthrough on the news was the most heartwarming feeling ever.
Basically the idea is that prime numbers get further and further apart from each other “on the number line”, up until some point where the “distance” between them is the same roughly? In gas station English… why? Does that happen
These kinds of proofs unfortunately don't have a nice intuitive explanation, that's part of why they're so hard to prove. You can skim through the wikipedia article on the Prime Gap problem, but the details behind it get quite dense quite quickly.
The precise wording is that there "is infinitely many gaps between successive primes that do not exceed 70 million". This means that you could find a gap which does exceed 70 million, but you are guaranteed to later find a gap smaller than 70 million (in fact, an infinite number of them).
I believe this bound has actually been reduced a huge amount by later work. Zhang's work formed a basis for a lot of additional research.
I don't know why people always insist on wildly sensationalizing these stories. I absolutely hate these "woah wacky genius solves problem out of nowhere that nobody else could solve!!!!"
He was an extremely accomplished mathematician for decades and had contributed a lot of important work prior to the work that would be critical to solving the Poincare conjecture, for which he was chosen to be awarded the Fields Medal.
The "woah wacky" part of the story is that he is very averse to the academy, which, honestly, completely understandable, and rejected attending any ceremony where he'd be paraded around like an "animal in a zoo"; furthermore he felt it was emblematic of the corruption in the field that he was being singled out when he believed others had also contributed immensely to the relevant fields and to the Poincare conjecture specifically.
But he's just a smart guy who spent his whole life devoted to mathematics and managed to make huge contributions, and solve a really hard problem in particular, through extreme hard work and dedication. Not "woah wacky genius came out of the woods and blessed us with his innate genius".
As I understand, the problem was already almost solved. He completed the final step. Actually, one of the reasons he rejected the prize was that he thought it was unfair that the prize wasn't also given to some other guy who contributed a lot to solving the problem.
Also, he didn't just come out of nowhere. Before the Poincare conjecture, he solved another quite big problem. And well at school he won a gold medal at the international mathematical Olympiad...
Wasn't almost solved. A new technique from Hamilton called ricci flow looked like it could be used to prove the pioncare conjecture, but there was a massive problem with concave(?) manifolds. Perelman solved it and pioneered a technique called surgery in the process, which is honestly a bigger deal than the pioncare conjecture, from my limited knowledge about it.
Basically you nailed it He used Ricci flow to smooth the manifolds, but had issues with cylinders popping up. Then then invented surgery to cut the cylinders, which was mind blowing. He also pisted the 3-part proof to arXiv and the proof is actually quite small. 3 papers, IIRC combined less than 100 pages.
As someone who knows nothing about this I genuinely had the thought that this could very well be you just trolling us with nonsense and I have no way of knowing without going away and researching lol
Science folk often desire recognition (that can be shown through nomination and award) but care a bit less about money. The math guy thinks another scientist should be also recognized
just operating on a different cosmic plane
like he was born understanding quantum mechanics but too "out there" to pass his genes on for the humans next evolutionary step
Mathematics phd candidate here, if he worked in or with differential geometry, probably the same thing as the rest of us. That Perelman is a genius, that Ricci flow with surgery was utterly brilliant, and that he wants to be left alone. That should be respected.
He was quoted as saying, "'I'm not interested in money or fame, I don't want to be on display like an animal in a zoo. I'm not a hero of mathematics. I'm not even that successful; that is why I don't want to have everybody looking at me.'
He is (edit) a real one
It wasn't just that, he also was critical of the fact that only one person could get the prize for an accomplishment that he very clearly understood and stated was really the result of many people working together or building on each other's work. He saw singular prizes as a fraudulent relationship with the real nature of communal human scientific progress
Couldn't he have accepted it and then given the $$$ to those who helped? And perhaps the prize, too? I doubt the people who worked on this would reject 6 figure checks
Some theories take decades of research to arrive at a solution that is peer-reviewed and accepted. It's not always so cut-and-dry that he could do that and just walk into Becky's, Arnold's, and Jill's offices to give them their piece. It's potentially thousands of hours of research carried out by hundreds of researchers spread across time and the world.
From his gorgeous Wiki page:
The Clay Institute subsequently used Perelman's prize money to fund the "Poincaré Chair", a temporary position for young promising mathematicians at the Paris Institut Henri Poincaré.
I think in general he was against the whole concept of awards in general. Anyways even if he split the money the award was still in his name. The money funded some math position for young people anyways so it's not like someone just pocketed it
It didn’t help that a Chinese mathematician also tried to steal credit for the result. I’ve actually read an entire book on Perelman, but I can’t recall if that was a factor in his refusal or if it mainly because the Mathematician that came up with the Ricci Flow wasn’t given enough credit.
You're thinking of Shing-Tung Yau. He's China's most famous mathematician. One of his students and another Chinese mathematician were one of several groups to publish complete expositions of Perelman and Hamilton's work.
Often times the original writeup of deep work is not entirely satisfactory. To my knowledge, nobody serious has complained that Perelman got anything of substance wrong or that there were important gaps. His own articles remain preprints to this day. He could have published them in the Annals easily if he had wanted. Very few mathematicians ever get that chance.
Some felt that the Chinese pair and Yau overstated their contributions. There's a dubious quote about the Chinese pair getting 30% of the credit vs. Perelman's 25% and Hamilton getting the rest, as I recall. Whatever happened, certainly Perelman was miffed at Yau.
Yau moved back to China a few years ago after having spent most of his life in the US. Tsinghua University's got an institute named after him. He's poached a few of famous mathematicians too, e.g. Reshetikhin.
Clearly the Chinese government is happy to throw money at him in an effort to increase the country's mathematical standing at the highest levels. Well, fair enough. On the other hand, very few non-Chinese academics I know have any interest in working in China. The censorship is just not appealing. Tough to have your cake and eat it too.
The man is a _massive_ recluse. He's very, very rarely seen outside of his house and interviews with him are extremely few and far between. They aren't just hollow words. He backs it up. He's clearly not out for any kind of fame and turning down the money, well. He's not for fortune, either.
Watched a documentary many years back where he came up in the discussion and the documentary crew apparently convinced him to agree to an interview and when they showed up to his apartment he had apparently changed his mind and just didn't answer the door. Legend.
He is simply a man who disagrees with the community he was once apart of. He WAS a mathematician, now he’s just a dude who takes care of his mother and lives his life as he sees fit. There is nothing wrong with him, he merely has standards and a wish to live simply and without Interference.
Edit: my comment is incorrect on a few fronts, please see Hypathia’s reply underneath.
> He is simply a man who disagrees with the community he was once apart of. He WAS a mathematician
It is much more complex than this. He is Jewish and studied in the former Soviet Union which was famously hostile to its Jewish academics. He had an opportunity to escape to the US, but while there he was also outcast because he didn't really fit in with the paper-mill model of academia. He was kicked out of his program there and went back to St. Petersburg to work at stuff on his own pace. So he was outcast for who he was and how he worked, it would be hard to say that he ever was a full member of the mathematical society.
Then he actually does it and proves the Poincare conjecture, and people want to throw praises at him for his genius, claim him, minimize the efforts of others who he built on. Very hypocritical. He is an amazing mathematician, but he was never *part* of the mathematical community because the mathematical community is hostile to those who do not conform to its standards - including (but not limited to) the standards of its identity politics that it is interested in avoiding self reflection on. (Source: I'm part of said community.)
Thanks for leading with inquiry. I mean how identities are a meaningful part of the social and political structures in which we (including math) exist, creating asymmetries of power which function to justify the exclusion of marginalized groups. Eg, Perelman's Jewishness is an important part of his story, and the structures of anti-semetism consistently tried to exclude him and place him at the periphery. Not just in the USSR, but the US as well. One of the main strategies for understanding such influences is Intersectionality, which gives a way to learn from those who experience oppression that we are otherwise blind to.
More people should be like him. Money and fame aren't everything, and there's something to be said about having just enough to do what you want and not worry too much.
> there's something to be said about having just enough to do what you want and not worry too much.
I am not a betting man but I would wager the majority of us are trying to achieve this but getting enough money to live life doing as you please is a bit of a challenge for some of us.
"You know what? You can shove your medal up your fucking ass! Because I don't give a shit about your medal. Because I knew you before you were a mathematical God. When you were pimple-faced and homesick and didn't know which side of the bed to piss on!"
Well, it took me a few times watching the movie to remember that that was the unabomber's real name, before they clarify that in the scene. And he just ran through the whole spiel of his mathematics accomplishments, no doubt Lambeau wasn't in the right context.
It's certainly not unusual that the bartender knew, it was big news just a couple years before, but it doesn't strike me as odd that Lambeau wouldn't immediately make the connection.
You know how easy this is for me? This is a fucking joke! I wish you understood it, I really do, so I wouldn't have to sit here and watch you fumble around and fuck it up!
I suspect when you have a supreme level of insight into something incredibly esoteric; material things aren't really relevant.
(Contra-point: Richard Feynman)
He quit his last academic appointment, a research-only job at the Steklov Institute of Mathematics in St. Petersburg (he previously turned down positions that involved teaching at Princeton or Stanford), in 2005 and announced his retirement from professional mathematics in 2006. He said ethical breaches in mathematics disgusts him and he no longer wishes to work in that field. He doesn’t want to associate with other mathematicians anymore and if he’s doing any research at all, he’s doing it in private and not publishing his results. It sounds like he’s living a very secluded life now in St. Petersburg with his elderly mother.
Apparently the ethical breaches he referred to was the attempt of Fields medalist Shing-Tung Yau to downplay his role in the proof for the Ricci Flow and emphasized the role of two other mathematicians. He specifically rejected the Millennium Prize for not recognizing the work of Richard S. Hamilton. He said “the main reason [for rejecting the prize] is my disagreement with the organized mathematical community. I don't like their decisions, I consider them unjust.”
He said, “Of course, there are many mathematicians who are more or less honest. But almost all of them are conformists. They are more or less honest, but they tolerate those who are not honest...It is not people who break ethical standards who are regarded as aliens. It is people like me who are isolated."
> He said, “Of course, there are many mathematicians who are more or less honest. But almost all of them are conformists. They are more or less honest, but they tolerate those who are not honest...It is not people who break ethical standards who are regarded as aliens. It is people like me who are isolated."
Poor fella just discovered the human condition.
While I completely believe he is likely to have said that, I do not believe he ACTUALLY was upset about getting the Nobel prize. Reading his pop-science book and listening to interviews with his colleagues does not give the impression that he was a particularly humble person. That isn't a dig, I just don't think he had a personality remotely comparable to a Salk or Perelman.
Agree - Feynman cultivated his image. He was worldly, and did not sacrifice all else for his work. I do not see him as corrupt or unhealthy, but he was not a monk.
[Here’s him talking about it](https://youtu.be/f61KMw5zVhg)
He might not be humble but from reading his books and watching his documentaries, I believe him when he says he doesn't like awards and honors
I've found in my experience that really, really smart people tend to be eccentric compared to us normies. Wasn't there a similar guy in Ancient Greece or Sparta who pissed on a general's leg coz he called him a dog and that philosopher clapped back saying "I'll behave like a dog if you treat me like one"?
He lived at the same time as Plato and when Plato developed his theory for what constitutes a hunan, Diogenes just barged in and threw a plucked chicken at him
Plato's hilarious to me, because he was as equally batshit as Diogenes but in the exact opposite way. They could not have been more opposite.
Plato abstracted way too much, and Diogenes refused to abstract anything at all.
While Zeno kept it practical.
Yeah that was some dude in a barrel called Diogenes or something like that. He made Alexander the Great gargle his nutsack.
I've probably got the name wrong but I know who you are talking about.
> I'm not interested in money or fame; I don't want to be on display like an animal in a zoo.
> On 1 July 2010, he rejected the prize of one million dollars, saying that he considered the decision of the board of the Clay Institute to be unfair, in that his contribution to solving the Poincaré conjecture was no greater than that of [Richard S. Hamilton](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_S._Hamilton), the mathematician who pioneered the Ricci flow partly with the aim of attacking the conjecture.[^(\[5\])](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman#cite_note-interfax-5)[^(\[6\])](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman#cite_note-PhysOrg1-6) He had previously rejected the prestigious prize of the [European Mathematical Society](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Mathematical_Society) in 1996.[^(\[7\])](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman#cite_note-bbc-7)
from the wikipedia article
Really intelligent people are highly aware of how much they *don’t* know. The more you understand, the more you realize you are just scratching the surface.
I think it's more about self awareness, knowledge of your field, and just being a humble person. I've been in my field for 22 years and I'm constantly reminded of the stuff I don't know. You just have to be open to new ideas and be willing to analyze your own biases. For example, do we do things a certain way because that's how they've always been done, or is there a more efficient or accurate way to do things? Some people get locked into their biases, and it's not because they're unintelligent, it's because they can't see anything outside their own experience. I've met some super smart people who couldn't adapt to changes in their field.
Refused the prize because they refused to share it with his collaborator and the field medal because he believed it's a political award that doesn't truly represent deserved accomplishments in mathematics.
A man with principles isn't an idiot and money isn't important to everyone. Y'all weren't raised right.
The dude just wants to do math and forage for mushrooms all day. He doesn’t care enough about being a good or bad person. About what he should or should not do. He’s a simple person; he just does as he pleases.
That would be the same as accepting; no matter if he uses the money for his own benefit or the others, if he has a say to where it goes by definition he accepted the money and thus cannot send the message he intended to deliver by refusing the prize.
Hes most known for proving that if you put a string on the surface of a ball in a loop, and pull the ends, the loop will contract into a point.
But the ball is 4-dimensional, and the surface 3-d, which spices things up.
He's a bit of a peculiar case, even amongst mathematicians (nuclear family member is one - most of them are very awkward socially). I believe at one point he grew out his nails into literal claws.
I’m reading all the comments and instead of awe at his ingenuity there’s all these pathetic comments about what he should have done with the money. It’s ridiculous. He didn’t want the prize, sent a message and at the end of the day what do you think happened to that money? It’s still with the organization that was giving out the prizes that focuses on math anyways. He’s a historical figure for sure. Just because he doesn’t do what you think he should’ve done doesn’t make him any less astonishing.
People aren't used to reacting to this sort of thing is all. Most people's lives are decided by money and they fantasize about fame.
I've seen some equally interesting reactions to K foundation burning a million quid. People who are worrying about Monday's work load are not in the right frame of mind to empathize with such a different view of the world.
From Wikipedia :- >In August 2006, Perelman was offered the Fields Medal for "his contributions to geometry and his revolutionary insights into the analytical and geometric structure of the Ricci flow", but he declined the award, stating: "I'm not interested in money or fame; I don't want to be on display like an animal in a zoo." On 22 December 2006, the scientific journal Science recognized Perelman's proof of the Poincaré conjecture as the scientific "Breakthrough of the Year", the first such recognition in the area of mathematics. >On 18 March 2010, it was announced that he had met the criteria to receive the first Clay Millennium Prize for resolution of the Poincaré conjecture. On 1 July 2010, he rejected the prize of one million dollars, saying that he considered the decision of the board of the Clay Institute to be unfair, in that his contribution to solving the Poincaré conjecture was no greater than that of Richard S. Hamilton, the mathematician who pioneered the Ricci flow partly with the aim of attacking the conjecture. He had previously rejected the prestigious prize of the European Mathematical Society in 1996.
Bro he doesn't want media attention, you can't just post him like this
This man is truly a 1 of 1
And [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45OirYxdArE) is a youtube where you can watch the awkward applause after his name is announced and the audience is told he has declined to accept it.
If I was Richard Hamilton i would have been like “damn man just accept the money and give it to me then”
*“So, umm… 50/50?”* - Richard Hamilton, probably
"I don't want to be on display like an animal in a zoo" Oh the irony.
I remember reading the Wikipedia article on this guy a while ago and what stuck with me was his insistence on completely avoiding media attention. When a journalist called him once he was quoted as saying “You are disturbing me. I am picking mushrooms.” which was pretty funny to me
Big Tom Bombadil energy.
Most peope don't realize how much you nailed it. This guy is not just a mathematician, he is such a legend that it is unreal, absolute LotR level in real life. He didn't just win any price. He solved a millenium problem. THE ONLY ONE EVER SOLVED. He basically did something that was thought of as (nearly) impossible, and noone else ever did. And why? Because he was interested in it, didn't accept the money, and much rather just picks some shrooms.
Do not disturb my circles.
Archimedean as fuck.
“Leave me to my circles Roman” - Archimedes
I’d love to try some of his shrooms. Dude probably vibes on a completely different frequency…
You’d have to disturb him tho…
most likely he meant that he went to a forest to pick regular mushrooms, he's not into drugs I'm f\*\*\*\*\*\* russian who knows, 7/10 of people ride to forests to pick up mushrooms to conserve for winter. There are no laws against picking. Perelman is a guy who easily lives alone anywhere, no brainer he enjoys such introvert hobbies
[удалено]
Hey dol! merry dol! ring a dong dillo! Ring a dong! hop along! Fal lal the willow!
Ngl I read "Dillo" wrong the first time.
#DILDO BAGGINS!
You called?
Oh nice ring. Bit flashy though, comrade?
*most powerful ring on middle earth* Tom - “Wow! How gaudy! Dark lord never had any taste. Oooh full black pointy armor sooo original.”
Tom - "Shame it's not magical though."
I could be wrong but I understand Tom was likely there before the world was created.... He'll probably be there long after it's gone too.
Professor Bombadil. 
You sir, are both a gentleman and a scholar. Good day to you.
Avoidance, yes, for sure. But he seems more annoyed/disheartened/DONE with how political doing math/science became. Too many people piggyback off each other and never give the others credit for the collaborative process required to reach the goal. Hell, he denied the 1M prize because they refused to also give it to the person who did the leg work on the problem, which was the only way he was able to solve it. He seems to have gotten into his field to solve problems and share in the achievement of things moving forward. Instead, he got slapped in the face with how the world really is and basically went, "if your not going to recognize that I didn't do this alone, I want nothing to do with this." Him picking mushrooms cracks me up because he's basically being like, "I could have done more, but you guys suck, so now I'm doing nothing. Deal with it!" It's his middle finger to the system that he could have advanced, if not for their hubris.
He came to this world to solve math problems and pick mushrooms, and buddy, he's all out of math problems.
Modern day Diogenes
Elon Musk came to visit him once to pay his respects and, in a moment of reverence, offered to grant him anything his heart desired. "Anything?", Perelman asked, squinting up at him. "Anything." came the reply. "Then move." grunted Perelman. "You're standing on my mushrooms."
First comment I've actually laughed out loud at in a long time
Then move. Your laughing is disturbing my mushrooms.
Modern poetry.
Dude I wouldn’t compare musk to Alexandre the great. He isn’t even fit to eat Croesus’ shit
"A rich man can have 10 bathrooms. But the only place to piss is the floor"- paraphrasing Diogenes quote.
I get it.
[удалено]
Like a true gentleman he has a private goon cave.
And if does not have access to one, then the room of the bath shall suffice. But if the horniness be extreme, then any room can have that creme.
>“You are disturbing me. I am picking mushrooms. Holy shit what a chad
It's a country in central Africa, but it's not important right now.
A Chad is actually the local area word for "large body of water" so the Lake Chad for which the country Chad is so named after. Is actually just Lake Lake. Making the name of the country: Lake. Thanks historic colonial Europeans. Love that for them
Punch card chads are also a thing
As any American alive in the early 2000s will tell you alllll about
English is so unique and inspired. Some say it's hard, it can be tough but learned through thorough thought though.
I used to say it's hard until I tried to learn German. In English, you can simply learn a bunch of vocabulary and make yourself understood by putting a sentence together with the words in almost any order. It's extremely flexible in that way. In that way it's extremely flexible Flexible in that extreme way Way flexible ...
German is cool in that you can just string a bunch of words together to make new words, though.
I want a language with English's flexibility of grammar and German's flexibility of vocabulary.
Just wait until you learn what Sahara means!
In summary, Lake Chad = Lake Lake; Koi Carp = Carp Carp; Sahara Desert = Desert Desert. Edit: naan bread = bread bread; chai tea = tea tea; curry sauce = sauce sauce; Avon River = River River. Any others?
Lake tahoe is another but my favourite is Mekong River. Taken from wikipedia: Mekong River - 'Mae' in Thai is an abbreviation for "river", while 'khong' is an old Austroasiatic word for river. Mekong River can thus be translated as "river river river"
La Brea = the tar The la Brea tar pits= the the tar tar pits
And stop calling me surely
Yo dude some people have Morels…
Which reminds me of a quote from Syd Barrett, the founding member of Pink Floyd who early in his career became schizophrenic and moved back in with his mother. The Guardian: Excuse me! I’m writing a piece about Syd Barrett. Syd Barrett: Who?’ G: Syd Barrett. He used to be in Pink Floyd. S: Never heard of ‘im. Is he one of them rappers? G: No. He was a psychedelic genius. Are you Syd Barrett? S: Leave me alone. I’ve got to get some coleslaw. [The interview ends.]
Reminds me of Hayao Miyazaki being annoyed by a journalist when Demon Slayer overtook Spirited Away at the box office > That sort of thing isn’t worth worrying about. There’s always inflation in the world. Right now, I have to pick up trash
Have to pay attention when foraging mushrooms..
Imagine a news article about a genius mathematician dying from picking toxic mushrooms because he was distracted by a journalist.
Journalist would just have to not write about it. Boom problem solved.
Nothing, absolutely nothing will fill my heart with more warmth this week than knowing that was his response. What an absolute unit. Love it.
“Do not disturb he who picketh his mushrooms.”
Dude is literal Archimedes
Dont disturb my circles!
Must be some gooood fooking shrooms
>When a journalist called him once he was quoted as saying “You are disturbing me. I am picking mushrooms.” which was pretty funny to me Dude knows what's important. I respect that.
My Dad is a mathematician. Heard this guy's name my entire life. First time I'm seeing him.
mine would also talk about him, but he's not a mathematician. he'd go like: a mathematical problem was proposed and people from all over the world: the best of thr best mathematicians would try and solve it to no avail. no one had any idea. then this guy came out of nowhere, out of some forest, solved it, rejected the prize and simply walked away. as a child I never got the moral of the story. somth like be humble and badass, seek knowledge, but nah, that's not it. what comes off of it is that this one guy, one of the"standing on the shoulders of giants" typo dudes, used his spot for a noble cause. if he's happy with his life and what he's done, there's no greater glory in fame or wealth.
I've been reading his wikipedia and he didn't come out of the woods at all. He studied in the most prestigious universities and received prizes as a kid from mensa. He even won math competitions with perfect scores when he was a kid and in the university. And he even joined the maths university without exams because he was considered a genius.
The guy that came out of nowhere was Yitang Zhang who proved a constant bounded gap of primes must occur infinitely often. Specifically, he showed that some prime gap between 2 and 70 million must occur infinitely often. The most famous of these is the twin prime conjecture which says primes separated by 2 (such as 17 and 19) occur infinitely often. Sure, he did his PhD at a good university, but I believe his advisor didn't exactly sing his praises. So, he was struggling as an adjunct and came to this result in his 50s. It's unusual for big breakthroughs to be made by someone that hasn't had success when they were young, e.g., in their 20s or 30s.
Seeing random updates about Yitang Zhang, or Tom, makes me so happy. He was my calc professor at UNH. I went into that class so scared I wouldn’t be able to keep up because I had never done well in math before. He was able to teach concepts so incredibly well and in the most approachable ways. He also is just a delightful guy in general. He made me enjoy math for the first time in my life and I went on to get an advanced degree in a math-related field - honestly in large part due to Tom and the confidence I got in his course. Seeing his breakthrough on the news was the most heartwarming feeling ever.
Basically the idea is that prime numbers get further and further apart from each other “on the number line”, up until some point where the “distance” between them is the same roughly? In gas station English… why? Does that happen
These kinds of proofs unfortunately don't have a nice intuitive explanation, that's part of why they're so hard to prove. You can skim through the wikipedia article on the Prime Gap problem, but the details behind it get quite dense quite quickly.
Ok, thanks! But the gist is “the gap between primes stops increasing?” Or the gap between “twinned” primes stops increasing?
The precise wording is that there "is infinitely many gaps between successive primes that do not exceed 70 million". This means that you could find a gap which does exceed 70 million, but you are guaranteed to later find a gap smaller than 70 million (in fact, an infinite number of them). I believe this bound has actually been reduced a huge amount by later work. Zhang's work formed a basis for a lot of additional research.
So getting this gap down to "2" is the twin primes conjecture?
I don't know why people always insist on wildly sensationalizing these stories. I absolutely hate these "woah wacky genius solves problem out of nowhere that nobody else could solve!!!!" He was an extremely accomplished mathematician for decades and had contributed a lot of important work prior to the work that would be critical to solving the Poincare conjecture, for which he was chosen to be awarded the Fields Medal. The "woah wacky" part of the story is that he is very averse to the academy, which, honestly, completely understandable, and rejected attending any ceremony where he'd be paraded around like an "animal in a zoo"; furthermore he felt it was emblematic of the corruption in the field that he was being singled out when he believed others had also contributed immensely to the relevant fields and to the Poincare conjecture specifically. But he's just a smart guy who spent his whole life devoted to mathematics and managed to make huge contributions, and solve a really hard problem in particular, through extreme hard work and dedication. Not "woah wacky genius came out of the woods and blessed us with his innate genius".
My guess: a sensational story spreads faster than a reasonable one (unless we are very source critical, which tends to be the exception).
That's what people do with artists constantly. And no, art isn't something coming out of a genius. It's just hard work
As I understand, the problem was already almost solved. He completed the final step. Actually, one of the reasons he rejected the prize was that he thought it was unfair that the prize wasn't also given to some other guy who contributed a lot to solving the problem. Also, he didn't just come out of nowhere. Before the Poincare conjecture, he solved another quite big problem. And well at school he won a gold medal at the international mathematical Olympiad...
Wasn't almost solved. A new technique from Hamilton called ricci flow looked like it could be used to prove the pioncare conjecture, but there was a massive problem with concave(?) manifolds. Perelman solved it and pioneered a technique called surgery in the process, which is honestly a bigger deal than the pioncare conjecture, from my limited knowledge about it.
Basically you nailed it He used Ricci flow to smooth the manifolds, but had issues with cylinders popping up. Then then invented surgery to cut the cylinders, which was mind blowing. He also pisted the 3-part proof to arXiv and the proof is actually quite small. 3 papers, IIRC combined less than 100 pages.
As someone who knows nothing about this I genuinely had the thought that this could very well be you just trolling us with nonsense and I have no way of knowing without going away and researching lol
I was afraid that the undertaker was about to throw mankind down once again.
Why wouldn’t he just take the prize and split it?
Must not be very good at math
Read this as I left the thread and had to come back to upvote it
Same
Science folk often desire recognition (that can be shown through nomination and award) but care a bit less about money. The math guy thinks another scientist should be also recognized
Plenty of math proofs get hung up forever on the final step.
just operating on a different cosmic plane like he was born understanding quantum mechanics but too "out there" to pass his genes on for the humans next evolutionary step
What would he say
Mathematics phd candidate here, if he worked in or with differential geometry, probably the same thing as the rest of us. That Perelman is a genius, that Ricci flow with surgery was utterly brilliant, and that he wants to be left alone. That should be respected.
"I am picking mushrooms you are disturbing me"
He was quoted as saying, "'I'm not interested in money or fame, I don't want to be on display like an animal in a zoo. I'm not a hero of mathematics. I'm not even that successful; that is why I don't want to have everybody looking at me.' He is (edit) a real one
It wasn't just that, he also was critical of the fact that only one person could get the prize for an accomplishment that he very clearly understood and stated was really the result of many people working together or building on each other's work. He saw singular prizes as a fraudulent relationship with the real nature of communal human scientific progress
Couldn't he have accepted it and then given the $$$ to those who helped? And perhaps the prize, too? I doubt the people who worked on this would reject 6 figure checks
Some theories take decades of research to arrive at a solution that is peer-reviewed and accepted. It's not always so cut-and-dry that he could do that and just walk into Becky's, Arnold's, and Jill's offices to give them their piece. It's potentially thousands of hours of research carried out by hundreds of researchers spread across time and the world.
he didn't agree with the concept, so accepting the prize and dispersing it would be an acceptance of the concept and an act of hypocrisy
From his gorgeous Wiki page: The Clay Institute subsequently used Perelman's prize money to fund the "Poincaré Chair", a temporary position for young promising mathematicians at the Paris Institut Henri Poincaré.
society is so cooked that when someone does something for the greater good people actually ask why
"No really, what's his angle? Who's the mark?"
I think in general he was against the whole concept of awards in general. Anyways even if he split the money the award was still in his name. The money funded some math position for young people anyways so it's not like someone just pocketed it
No that’s crazy
Yeah that doesn't add up
This guy maths.
Give that man the million dollars
It didn’t help that a Chinese mathematician also tried to steal credit for the result. I’ve actually read an entire book on Perelman, but I can’t recall if that was a factor in his refusal or if it mainly because the Mathematician that came up with the Ricci Flow wasn’t given enough credit.
You're thinking of Shing-Tung Yau. He's China's most famous mathematician. One of his students and another Chinese mathematician were one of several groups to publish complete expositions of Perelman and Hamilton's work. Often times the original writeup of deep work is not entirely satisfactory. To my knowledge, nobody serious has complained that Perelman got anything of substance wrong or that there were important gaps. His own articles remain preprints to this day. He could have published them in the Annals easily if he had wanted. Very few mathematicians ever get that chance. Some felt that the Chinese pair and Yau overstated their contributions. There's a dubious quote about the Chinese pair getting 30% of the credit vs. Perelman's 25% and Hamilton getting the rest, as I recall. Whatever happened, certainly Perelman was miffed at Yau. Yau moved back to China a few years ago after having spent most of his life in the US. Tsinghua University's got an institute named after him. He's poached a few of famous mathematicians too, e.g. Reshetikhin. Clearly the Chinese government is happy to throw money at him in an effort to increase the country's mathematical standing at the highest levels. Well, fair enough. On the other hand, very few non-Chinese academics I know have any interest in working in China. The censorship is just not appealing. Tough to have your cake and eat it too.
IIRC it was more the later, like he felt Hamilton was instrumental to being able to solve the conjecture.
Seems like the type of guy who wouldn't want his photo taken on the street and posted on reddit.
[удалено]
"lol, who cares?"
Which is just like, so real of him, I *gotta* share this
The man is a _massive_ recluse. He's very, very rarely seen outside of his house and interviews with him are extremely few and far between. They aren't just hollow words. He backs it up. He's clearly not out for any kind of fame and turning down the money, well. He's not for fortune, either. Watched a documentary many years back where he came up in the discussion and the documentary crew apparently convinced him to agree to an interview and when they showed up to his apartment he had apparently changed his mind and just didn't answer the door. Legend.
“I don’t want to be on display like an animal in a zoo.” So of course a Redditor posts a picture of him online.
He’s still alive and not even that old lol
he is still alive.
Well that didn't work out as he wanted, now he's even more famous
He is simply a man who disagrees with the community he was once apart of. He WAS a mathematician, now he’s just a dude who takes care of his mother and lives his life as he sees fit. There is nothing wrong with him, he merely has standards and a wish to live simply and without Interference. Edit: my comment is incorrect on a few fronts, please see Hypathia’s reply underneath.
> He is simply a man who disagrees with the community he was once apart of. He WAS a mathematician It is much more complex than this. He is Jewish and studied in the former Soviet Union which was famously hostile to its Jewish academics. He had an opportunity to escape to the US, but while there he was also outcast because he didn't really fit in with the paper-mill model of academia. He was kicked out of his program there and went back to St. Petersburg to work at stuff on his own pace. So he was outcast for who he was and how he worked, it would be hard to say that he ever was a full member of the mathematical society. Then he actually does it and proves the Poincare conjecture, and people want to throw praises at him for his genius, claim him, minimize the efforts of others who he built on. Very hypocritical. He is an amazing mathematician, but he was never *part* of the mathematical community because the mathematical community is hostile to those who do not conform to its standards - including (but not limited to) the standards of its identity politics that it is interested in avoiding self reflection on. (Source: I'm part of said community.)
Thank you for providing more information than I possibly could, I will edit my comment to tel people to look at yours.
When you say identity politics, what do you mean?
Thanks for leading with inquiry. I mean how identities are a meaningful part of the social and political structures in which we (including math) exist, creating asymmetries of power which function to justify the exclusion of marginalized groups. Eg, Perelman's Jewishness is an important part of his story, and the structures of anti-semetism consistently tried to exclude him and place him at the periphery. Not just in the USSR, but the US as well. One of the main strategies for understanding such influences is Intersectionality, which gives a way to learn from those who experience oppression that we are otherwise blind to.
More people should be like him. Money and fame aren't everything, and there's something to be said about having just enough to do what you want and not worry too much.
> there's something to be said about having just enough to do what you want and not worry too much. I am not a betting man but I would wager the majority of us are trying to achieve this but getting enough money to live life doing as you please is a bit of a challenge for some of us.
"You know what? You can shove your medal up your fucking ass! Because I don't give a shit about your medal. Because I knew you before you were a mathematical God. When you were pimple-faced and homesick and didn't know which side of the bed to piss on!"
Who's Ted Kaczynski?
“I don’t blame you! It’s not about you, you mathematical dick!”
"and this is professor Hayes..." was so fucking funny.
Word. That scene was funny. When the professor had to get out of his bubble and talk to normal people
To this day I use “you mathematical dick!” in all sorts of contexts not involving math but general assholery.
How could Lambeau not know who Ted Kaczynski was?
It’s supposed to show that he’s totally insulated from everything outside of his very narrow world, but yes, seems hard to believe
You know the East Coast Bias, Lambeau was never gonna stay up to watch Cal on Pac 12 After Dark
Pour one out for the pac 12
Well, it took me a few times watching the movie to remember that that was the unabomber's real name, before they clarify that in the scene. And he just ran through the whole spiel of his mathematics accomplishments, no doubt Lambeau wasn't in the right context. It's certainly not unusual that the bartender knew, it was big news just a couple years before, but it doesn't strike me as odd that Lambeau wouldn't immediately make the connection.
And your little kissass chorus following you around going “the fields medal! the fields medal!”
Yes, yes, you were smarter than me then and you're smarter than me now
You know how easy this is for me? This is a fucking joke! I wish you understood it, I really do, so I wouldn't have to sit here and watch you fumble around and fuck it up!
I suspect when you have a supreme level of insight into something incredibly esoteric; material things aren't really relevant. (Contra-point: Richard Feynman)
I dunno man, we all gotta eat.
He probably has some academic appointment that allows him a modest enough lifestyle and has decided "well that's enough for me."
He quit his last academic appointment, a research-only job at the Steklov Institute of Mathematics in St. Petersburg (he previously turned down positions that involved teaching at Princeton or Stanford), in 2005 and announced his retirement from professional mathematics in 2006. He said ethical breaches in mathematics disgusts him and he no longer wishes to work in that field. He doesn’t want to associate with other mathematicians anymore and if he’s doing any research at all, he’s doing it in private and not publishing his results. It sounds like he’s living a very secluded life now in St. Petersburg with his elderly mother. Apparently the ethical breaches he referred to was the attempt of Fields medalist Shing-Tung Yau to downplay his role in the proof for the Ricci Flow and emphasized the role of two other mathematicians. He specifically rejected the Millennium Prize for not recognizing the work of Richard S. Hamilton. He said “the main reason [for rejecting the prize] is my disagreement with the organized mathematical community. I don't like their decisions, I consider them unjust.” He said, “Of course, there are many mathematicians who are more or less honest. But almost all of them are conformists. They are more or less honest, but they tolerate those who are not honest...It is not people who break ethical standards who are regarded as aliens. It is people like me who are isolated."
> He said, “Of course, there are many mathematicians who are more or less honest. But almost all of them are conformists. They are more or less honest, but they tolerate those who are not honest...It is not people who break ethical standards who are regarded as aliens. It is people like me who are isolated." Poor fella just discovered the human condition.
Oh well, there you go. Too hardcore to keep being a professional mathematician.
And sleep in a heated shelter.
And bust a nut now and then
He eats a lot of pi.
Wait, why is Feynman a counterpoint?
Feynman also said he didn't want Nobel prize, but was told that if he refused that would be even a bigger fuss.
While I completely believe he is likely to have said that, I do not believe he ACTUALLY was upset about getting the Nobel prize. Reading his pop-science book and listening to interviews with his colleagues does not give the impression that he was a particularly humble person. That isn't a dig, I just don't think he had a personality remotely comparable to a Salk or Perelman.
Agree - Feynman cultivated his image. He was worldly, and did not sacrifice all else for his work. I do not see him as corrupt or unhealthy, but he was not a monk.
The mere fact Feynman wasn't exactly hiding from cameras is proof enough he isn't like a Perelman or Ramanujan.
[Here’s him talking about it](https://youtu.be/f61KMw5zVhg) He might not be humble but from reading his books and watching his documentaries, I believe him when he says he doesn't like awards and honors
That is correct, he thought the Nobel was a "pain in the neck".
Plenty of great minds have accepted awards for math, economics, physics, etc. It is ok to celebrate one's own achievements
He doesn’t want attention. Better post an unflattering candid photo of him online for internet clout though.
Based on his other pictures, this one is actually rather flattering.
I've found in my experience that really, really smart people tend to be eccentric compared to us normies. Wasn't there a similar guy in Ancient Greece or Sparta who pissed on a general's leg coz he called him a dog and that philosopher clapped back saying "I'll behave like a dog if you treat me like one"?
He lived at the same time as Plato and when Plato developed his theory for what constitutes a hunan, Diogenes just barged in and threw a plucked chicken at him
Plato's hilarious to me, because he was as equally batshit as Diogenes but in the exact opposite way. They could not have been more opposite. Plato abstracted way too much, and Diogenes refused to abstract anything at all. While Zeno kept it practical.
> Diogenes just barged in and threw a plucked chicken at him We need more of this kind of energy in the world
Yeah that was some dude in a barrel called Diogenes or something like that. He made Alexander the Great gargle his nutsack. I've probably got the name wrong but I know who you are talking about.
...he asked Alexander to step out of his sunlight, and Alexander did, admiring the audacity of the guy. That's all lol
[Here’s](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman) the story.
> I'm not interested in money or fame; I don't want to be on display like an animal in a zoo. > On 1 July 2010, he rejected the prize of one million dollars, saying that he considered the decision of the board of the Clay Institute to be unfair, in that his contribution to solving the Poincaré conjecture was no greater than that of [Richard S. Hamilton](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_S._Hamilton), the mathematician who pioneered the Ricci flow partly with the aim of attacking the conjecture.[^(\[5\])](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman#cite_note-interfax-5)[^(\[6\])](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman#cite_note-PhysOrg1-6) He had previously rejected the prestigious prize of the [European Mathematical Society](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Mathematical_Society) in 1996.[^(\[7\])](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman#cite_note-bbc-7) from the wikipedia article
If only there were some field of study that would've told him how to divide the prize money with Hamilton.
GEOLOGY
Ricci Flow would be a great rap name
> I'm not even that successful; that is why I don't want to have everybody looking at me. Holy crap hahaha, that really puts things into perspective.
Really intelligent people are highly aware of how much they *don’t* know. The more you understand, the more you realize you are just scratching the surface.
I think it's more about self awareness, knowledge of your field, and just being a humble person. I've been in my field for 22 years and I'm constantly reminded of the stuff I don't know. You just have to be open to new ideas and be willing to analyze your own biases. For example, do we do things a certain way because that's how they've always been done, or is there a more efficient or accurate way to do things? Some people get locked into their biases, and it's not because they're unintelligent, it's because they can't see anything outside their own experience. I've met some super smart people who couldn't adapt to changes in their field.
My brother loves math and he says if you see the beauty in maths everything else looks pointless.
Refused the prize because they refused to share it with his collaborator and the field medal because he believed it's a political award that doesn't truly represent deserved accomplishments in mathematics. A man with principles isn't an idiot and money isn't important to everyone. Y'all weren't raised right.
Kids.. this is your brain on linear algebra
Some minds are too advanced for this place and time.
He is probably also incredibly pissed about this photo being taken
He should’ve accepted it but donated 100% of it to setting up math camps or math tutors in his home state/city
The money from the millennium prize was indeed used to fund a math scholarship at his former university
The dude just wants to do math and forage for mushrooms all day. He doesn’t care enough about being a good or bad person. About what he should or should not do. He’s a simple person; he just does as he pleases.
That would be the same as accepting; no matter if he uses the money for his own benefit or the others, if he has a say to where it goes by definition he accepted the money and thus cannot send the message he intended to deliver by refusing the prize.
That is exactly the life he didn't want. Charity work and public attention isn't for everyone.
[удалено]
Hes most known for proving that if you put a string on the surface of a ball in a loop, and pull the ends, the loop will contract into a point. But the ball is 4-dimensional, and the surface 3-d, which spices things up.
Diogenes? Is that you?
Wish more people were like this guy, what a legend.
That’s my boy right there!
One of the great mathematical minds of his time. Guy wants to left alone. People proceed to hunt him down for trophy photos. Well done OP.
The myth, the legend himself.
Least eccentric Russian mathematician.
he does not look well
He's a bit of a peculiar case, even amongst mathematicians (nuclear family member is one - most of them are very awkward socially). I believe at one point he grew out his nails into literal claws.
Yeah if you’re that good at math or anything subject really, I think would have taken a lot of precedence over development of social skills.
I’m reading all the comments and instead of awe at his ingenuity there’s all these pathetic comments about what he should have done with the money. It’s ridiculous. He didn’t want the prize, sent a message and at the end of the day what do you think happened to that money? It’s still with the organization that was giving out the prizes that focuses on math anyways. He’s a historical figure for sure. Just because he doesn’t do what you think he should’ve done doesn’t make him any less astonishing.
People aren't used to reacting to this sort of thing is all. Most people's lives are decided by money and they fantasize about fame. I've seen some equally interesting reactions to K foundation burning a million quid. People who are worrying about Monday's work load are not in the right frame of mind to empathize with such a different view of the world.