推 idyllic:欽佩！ 08/22 22:52
推 Sfly:終於有第二位華裔得獎了 08/23 00:41
推 PowerHonor:希望他能繼續為數學努力阿 不要真的隱居山林 XD 08/23 09:50
→ PowerHonor:國外有媒體說他已經"絕口不提數學"了 不知真的假的~~ 08/23 09:51
推 lwei781:他失業中耶XD 08/25 15:39
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5274040.stm
Last Updated: Tuesday, 22 August 2006, 10:36 GMT 11:36 UK
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Maths genius declines top prize
Perelman, ICM
Perelman is said to shun self-promotion
Grigory Perelman, the Russian who seems to have solved one of the hardest
problems in mathematics, has declined one of the top prizes in maths.
The Fields Medals are among the most important prizes for mathematics, and
Perelman was to have picked up the award at a ceremony in Madrid.
However, the organisers told the BBC that Perelman had declined the prize.
In 2002, Perelman claimed to have solved a century-old problem called the
Poincare Conjecture.
So far, experts combing through his proof in order to verify it have found
no significant flaws.
This prize is the highest in mathematics
Terence Tao, Fields Medal winner 2006
"The official statement regarding Grigory Perelman is that he has declined
to accept the medal," said a spokesperson for the International Congress of
Mathematicians, which organised the meeting at which the prizes were announced.
The Fields Medals come with prize money of 15,000 Canadian dollars (?7,000)
for each recipient. They are awarded every four years.
There had been considerable speculation that Grigory "Grisha" Perelman would
decline the award. The Russian has been described as an "unconventional" and
"reclusive" genius who spurns self-promotion.
In 1996, he turned down a prize awarded to him by the European Congress of
Mathematicians.
Observers also suspect he will refuse a $1m (?529,000) prize offered by the
Clay Mathematics Institute in Massachusetts, US, if his proof of the Poincare
Conjecture stands up to scrutiny.
Prestigious honour
The Fields Medals are regarded as the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for
mathematics. They are awarded to mathematicians under the age of 40 for an
outstanding body of work and are decided by an anonymous committee.
The winners are Andrei Okounkov of the University of California, Berkeley,
Terence Tao from the University of California, Los Angeles, and Wendelin
Werner of the University of Paris-Sud in Orsay, France.
"It's quite an honour - very different to anything that's happened to me
before. This prize is the highest in mathematics," Terence Tao told the
BBC News website.
"Most prizes are specific to a single field, but this recognises achievement
across the whole of mathematics."
Mr Perelman was born in Leningrad (St Petersburg) 1966 in what was then the
Soviet Union. Aged 16, he won the top prize at the International Mathematical
Olympiad in Budapest in 1982.
Having received his doctorate from St Petersburg State University, he taught
at various US universities during the 1990s before returning home to take up
a post at the Steklov Mathematics Institute.
He resigned from the institute suddenly on January 1, and has reportedly been
unemployed since.
"He was very polite but he didn't talk very much," said Natalya Stepanovna,
a former colleague at the Steklov Mathematics Institute in St Petersburg. On
his decision to resign his post, she speculated: "Maybe he wanted to be free
to do his research."
Perelman gained international recognition in 2002 and 2003 when he published
two papers online that purported to solve the Poincare Conjecture.
Century-old problem
The riddle had perplexed mathematicians since it was first posited by Frenchman
Henri Poincare in 1904.
It is a central question in topology, the study of the geometrical properties
of objects that do not change when the they are stretched, distorted or shrunk.
The hollow shell of the surface of the Earth is what topologists call a
two-dimensional sphere. If one were to encircle it with a lasso of string, it
could be pulled tight to a point.
On the surface of a doughnut however, a lasso passing through the hole in the
centre cannot be shrunk to a point without cutting through the surface.
Since the 19th Century, mathematicians have known that the sphere is the only
enclosed two-dimensional space with this property. But they were uncertain
about objects with more dimensions.
The Poincare Conjecture says that a three-dimensional sphere is the only
enclosed three-dimensional space with no holes. But proof of the conjecture
has so far eluded mathematicians.
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