Russian Mathematician Rejects 1-Million Dollar Prize Reward For Solving a Hundred-Year Old Math Problem
I hope my editor will publish this. He should relate to this story because he, himself was a mathematician before he went into the blogging business. I also tried BS-Mathematics at the University of the Philippines so this topic is dear to me. I was browsing for news today and this story caught my eye. I am compelled to share this with you because it touched my heart and brought back old memories. Reclusive Russian mathematician, Grigori Perelman, made headlines around the world after he refused to accept his $ 1 million reward from the Clay Mathematics Institute. This prize was awarded to him last March but until now Perelman refuses to accept it. This cash reward was for his brilliant solution to the Poincaré conjecture, one of history’s top mathematical problems. It was first published in 1904 and despite the advances of modern super-computers, it still took a human genius to prove it.
Russian Genius Mathematician Grigori Perelman
Grigori Perelman solved the Poincaré conjecture by publishing a series of papers sketching proof to this enigma in 2002-2003. The Poincaré conjecture is “a mathematical theorem about the characterization of the three-dimensional sphere among three-dimensional manifolds. Originally conjectured by Henri Poincaré, the claim concerns a space that locally looks like ordinary three-dimensional space but is connected, finite in size, and lacks any boundary (a closed 3-manifold). The Poincaré conjecture claims that if such a space has the additional property that each loop in the space can be continuously tightened to a point, then it is just a three-dimensional sphere. An analogous result has been known in higher dimensions for some time.”
This action of Perelman is very surprising but as a fellow (former) mathematician, I understand his feelings. In 2006, he already rejected the Fields Medal (the Nobel Prize-version for Mathematics) as a protest towards what he calls “corrupted ethics of the Mathematics community.” His refusal to accept the million-dollar prize this year is further proof that he is still protesting the moral debasement of some of his fellow mathematicians. Perelman’s apparent anger was first revealed in an interview in 2006 where he explained that Chinese-American mathematician Shing-Tung Yau’s efforts to downplay his work on the Poincaré conjecture in favor of Cao and Zhu’s work reeked of foul ethics. Perelman stated “I can’t say I’m outraged. Other people do worse. 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.” He has also said that “It is not people who break ethical standards who are regarded as aliens. It is people like me who are isolated.”
Grigori Perelman’s courage to stand up against those who practices ethical violations in mathematics made him a hero to my eyes. It’s an open secret that the dirty politics of academic publishing is as ugly as it is in Washington, D.C. He is also angry that Math institutions tolerate those who are dishonest in the profession and punishes those who speak out like him. The See No Evil, Hear No Evil mantra of the Mathematics community is something he cannot and will not tolerate.
Perelman has been jobless and destitute since 2006 and lives with his mother in a cockroach-infested apartment in St. Petersburg, Russia. If he can refuse a million-dollar reward for his sheer genius on a matter of principle, then there is still hope for humanity. I support his action and laud him for his brave stand. I also felt the same moral outrage back in 1990 when I was competing in a Regional Math Olympiad. I was a 4th year high school student then competing with other seniors from other schools across Region 1. We lost in the quarter-finals against a team that we used to beat. This team won the Regional Championships but after the medals have been awarded, another competing team found out that one of the winning team-members was a niece of one of the Math Olympiad committee members who prepared all the math problems for the competition. While it was never proven that the said committee member leaked the math problems to his niece, he failed to inform his fellow committee members of his relationship to one of the contestants. This is an ethical problem that the Math Olympiad organization did not investigate and opted to ignore even though we wrote them a formal letter of complaint!
If my team won that Regional Math Olympiad, we would have had a crack at the National Competition. The winning team of the National Math Olympiad will get 10,000 pesos each as a reward and the chance to represent the Philippines in the 1992 International Math Olympiad in Moscow, Russia. Ever since my elementary days it was my dream to join the International Math Olympiad. But that unfortunate event in San Fernando, La Union Regional Math Olympiad shattered this dream. I graduated from high school and enrolled as a BS-Mathematics major at the University of the Philippines-Diliman in 1991. The pain was again remembered because one of the winners of the National Math Olympiad of 1990, Ernie Lope, was a classmate at University of the Philippines. He and his team went to Moscow in 1992 to represent the Philippines in the International Math Olympiad. I was dying with envy and bitterness. I used to outsmart Ernie Lope when I was still attending Philippine Science High School. He was kinda gay too and I always teased him (and sometime made him cry when I call him “bading”, “bakla”, “homo”, “AIDS!”). Damn it! These memories are two-decades old but they are so fresh in my head like it all happened only a week ago!
To cut the story short, I dropped out of the University of the Philippines because I lost interest in Mathematics. I lost my scholarship because I failed a Math subject in (talk about irony here) and I had no money to pay the tuition fees to continue my BS-Math Course. So here I am hacking out a mediocre living wrangling words instead of numbers. The last news I heard about Ernie Lope is that he was the actuarial chief for an insurance company. Yeah, he makes big money calculating how long before their customers die. That must be his punishment for getting eliminated in the first-round of the 1992 Moscow International Math Olympiad. I would have at least tried to get in to the quarter-finals!
But really, if I had the genius of Grigori Perelman (who also won the Gold Medal in the International Math Olympiad in 1982!), and I won this million-dollar prize, I would have accepted it without any hesitation. I need money to buy the iPhone 4, HTC EVO 4G, Xbox 360 Slim, Sony 55-inch Plasma TV and a new Toyota Prius! Forget about righteous indignation. Mommy, I want my geeky toys!
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Thank you for your informative and insightful article. Gregori Perelman’s genius as well as his integrity is indeed very commendable. I also find your experience with the Math Olympiad interesting. The 1990 National PMO you mentioned must be the one wherein we joined in the team competition. We were in the junior level and I remember one of the winners in the senior level was Ernie Lope. Reading about them brought back memories!