Why Perelman refused a million dollars (2 photos)

Perelman is usually portrayed as almost crazy, like he lives in the world of mathematics, doesn't need money, and all that stuff.

But in reality, the situation with his award was really nasty, and Perelman refused the prize not because he was crazy, but because he wanted to draw attention to the unethical behavior of the mathematical community.





What's the point: there are so-called millennium problems in mathematics. These are the seven mathematical problems identified by the Clay Mathematics Institute in 2000 as "important classical problems whose solutions have not been found for many years", for the solution of each of which a reward of 1 million US dollars is promised. One of these problems is the Poincaré conjecture. What is the essence of the conjecture - you can google it.

Perelman in 2002-2003 published on the Internet a proof of the Poincaré conjecture. But in modern mathematics, problems are not so easy and simple to solve, and these very proofs need to be checked - simply because the mathematician could make a mistake (and this often happens). If the check shows that there are no mistakes, then the author of the solution to the problem is the mathematician who published the solution; if there are mistakes, but the scientists who checked the solution to the problem were able to solve the problem themselves, then the laurels go to them.

So, Perelman's solution was checked by three groups of scientists, among whom were the Chinese Zhu Xiping and Cao Huaidong, led by Yau Shintong, and these same Chinese decided to simply plagiarize Perelman's solution, passing it off as their own. They declared that Perelman's solution contained errors, and therefore could not be considered proof of the Poincaré conjecture, then these Chinese themselves allegedly managed to find the correct solution, and, accordingly, they should receive the prize.

A small scandal arose... and everything died down. Because it is not accepted in the mathematician community to scandalize. The Chinese were pointed out for plagiarism and asked not to do it again, and they decided to award Perelman.

Only Perelman did not like it. Because not only was he slandered and they tried to steal his achievement, his offenders were not even punished in any way, and they continued to be considered handshakes in the mathematical community. And what could Perelman do? Well, he could have told his friends about it, written about it somewhere in the newspaper, but it would have been of no use. And so he refused the prize.

And this step attracted the attention of the whole world.

Well, the refusal of the prize was a consequence of this scandal, Perelman himself in 2005 broke off ties with the scientific community, because he was outraged by the behavior of colleagues who did not want to wash their dirty linen in public, in fact, here are Perelman's own words:

"Outsiders are not those who violate ethical standards in science... People like me - that's who find themselves in isolation... Of course, there are a lot of more or less honest mathematicians. But almost all of them are conformists. They themselves are honest, but they tolerate those who are not... While I remained invisible, I had a choice... Either to really annoy everyone (NY - to raise a fuss about unscrupulous methods in science), or to remain silent and tolerate the attitude towards myself as a house dog. Now that I have become a very visible person, I can no longer remain silent. That is why I was forced to leave."