Million Dollar Math Problem
Grigory Perelman and the mathematical breakthrough of the century—the Poincaré Conjecture.
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Grigory Perelman.
In 2000, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Clay Mathematics Institute — a nonprofit organization devoted to popularizing mathematical ideas and encouraging their professional exploration — identified seven exceptionally difficult math problems, and offered a million dollars for the solution of each. One was the Poincaré Conjecture, a classic of topology that was formulated by Henri Poincaré in 1904. No one expected that this particular problem—or any of the six others—would be solved anytime soon, which explains why the mathematics community was thrown for a loop when Russian mathematician Grigory Perelman, 43, posted his proof of the Poincaré Conjecture on the Internet in November 2002. Even more stunning—except to those familiar with his work—was that his proof turned out to be correct.
In the wake of this feat, Perelman did not behave as one might expect. As Russian journalist Masha Gessen notes in her new biography, “Perfect Rigor: A Genius + the Mathematical Breakthrough of the Century” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), [he] “did not publish his work in a refereed journal. He did not agree to vet or even review the explications of his proof written by others. He refused job offers from the world’s best universities. He refused to accept the Fields Medal, mathematics’ highest honor.” He even withdrew from the world of mathematics. And if the Clay Institute offers the million dollars that comes with the Millennium Prize, he probably won’t move to collect it.
With all of the above in mind, Failure took the opportunity to question Gessen about “Perfect Rigor” and her remarkable subject.
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