The Seeker

Grigori Perelman. A name not too familiar a few days ago. And a name unlikely to be synonymous with headline stories in this world of blatant 'celebritydom'. But some people are born to defy and be different. So who this guy and what did he really accomplish?

Grigori Perelman is a Russian mathematician who was recently conferred with the Field Medal in mathematics (Nobel of math) for his contributions towards solving Poincare conjecture. Now to quote straight from wikipedia :

"Grigori Perelman is a Russian mathematician who has made landmark contributions to Riemannian geometry and geometric topology .The Poincaré conjecture, proposed by French mathematician Henri Poincaré in 1904, is the most famous open problem in topology.

His early mathematical education occurred at the world-famous Leningrad Secondary School #239, a specialized school with advanced mathematics and physics programs. In 1982, as a member of the USSR team competing in the International Mathematical Olympiad, an international competition for high school students, he won a gold medal, achieving a perfect score.

In 1999, the Clay Mathematics Institute announced the Millennium Prize Problems – a one million dollar prize for the proof of several conjectures, including the Poincaré conjecture. There is universal agreement that a successful proof would constitute a landmark event in the history of mathematics, fully comparable with the proof by Andrew Wiles of Fermat's Last Theorem, but possibly even more far-reaching.

In November 2002, Perelman posted to the arXiv the first of a series of eprints in which he claimed to have outlined a proof of the geometrization conjecture, a result that includes the Poincaré conjecture as a particular case."

So he's just another geek ... whats the big deal?

The Big Deal is:

1. He refused (yes , turned down) the Field Medal.
2. He posted his solution , for free, on the internet to be accessed by anyone.
3. He lives a totally ascetic life in Russia and shuns fame and money instead of basking in the glory (and money) which he could have had.

Now topology is , let's just say, esoteric math. Not only is his genius striking , but his ideas, principles and humility unbelievable, and in a way, anachronistic (or should i say alien to human nature itself?). What is it about genius and eccentricity? Is the pursuit of knowledge so seductive that a man forgets and shuns the worldly charms for this ascetic life? If Gregori Perelman is anything to go by, it is. For some people life is all about truth and knowing it whether it manifests itself in the form of Mathematics, Science, Music et al.

While for the rest of us mortals, its about chasing green papers which will ironically oulive us.

To these 'Seekers' , i bow.

"11:15, restate my assumptions: 1. Mathematics is the language of nature. 2. Everything around us can be represented and understood through numbers. 3. If you graph these numbers, patterns emerge. Therefore: There are patterns everywhere in nature." - Pi (1998)