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[It is official:] Russian math genius ignores $1 million Millennium Prize
- rokhayakebe 16y agoSome call is poverty. Others call it something else. Maybe there is more to life than money.
- ez77 16y agoNo doubt Perelman feels it is a matter of principle. He felt unduly neglected by the mathematical establishment when he contacted prominent mathematicians to discuss with them his approach. I can only hope his mother fully shares his viewpoints if he still lives with her...
- rokhayakebe 16y ago+1 for "I hope his mother fully shares his viewpoints". That being said, it appears he also declined several great job offers. Some people just don't live for material things. Most people say they don't, but their actions (including mine) say differently. This guy doesn't talk his philosophy, he acts it.
- swolchok 16y agoEven if there really is more to life than X, that does not imply that X is not a useful part of life. (I guess I take issue with both the saying in general and this particular application of it.)
- greyman 16y agoDepends. If he can now spend all his time doing what he likes to do, why he would want an additional burden of managing all those money? And even if sometimes in the future he will be in a serious need of money, many math institutions or universities will be more than happy to employ him. So even without accepting that money, he can still do what he loves to do all his time. Happy man :)
- billforsternz 16y agoHe could choose a way of managing the money that was optimized for simplicity. For example putting it all in a one low risk low return income generating instrument. It's hard for me to believe that the stress involved in picking up a decent cheque every month for the rest of his life wouldn't be outweighed by the benefits. To me his actions are those of a "difficult" person. Very hard for a more relaxed (dare I say "normal") person to understand and rationalize. So I wouldn't bother. As others say, maybe that's part of what makes him different and special.
- Dirt_McGirt 16y agoWhere can I find a low risk investment that yields a decent monthly return on 1 million?
- billforsternz 16y agoBy decent I mean "worthwhile" or "significant". I specifically didn't say "enough to replace the income of a comfortably placed person in a first world country". 2% pa yields what, $1600 per month ? Don't you think that would be worthwhile to someone living in poverty in Russia ?
- rokhayakebe 16y agoThere are lots of useful things in life, but you do not have to accept a thing just because everyone says it is useful. If you asks me, this guy thinks for himself.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- baddox 16y agoPoverty means not being able to afford basic necessities. By that definition, I don't see how poverty can be seen as admirable or good in any way.
- SomeCallMeTim 16y agoThey probably sent him an email with the subject, "You've won a million dollars!" and it was ignored as spam.
- lancebailey 16y agoThats Funny :)
- duairc 16y agoWhy is this at -4? You heartless bastards!
- koenigdavidmj 16y agoHacker News tends to want only comments that contribute to the conversation. Mere statement that you laughed does not count.
- duairc 16y agoIt's completely harmless and it seems like a nice way to acknowledgement that the comment was appreciated. How is that possibly a bad thing? -4 means that 5 people decided that that comment was offensive to them. The only thing offensive about it is the lack of an apostrophe. Like, the person is just being nice. That they're at -4 for acknowledging their appreciation for another user's joke (5 people disliked this?!), and I'm only at 0 for an obviously negative, off-topic message where I call everyone heartless bastards (only 1 person disliked this) is absurd.
- koenigdavidmj 16y agoNo, minus four means that five people decided that the comment did not contribute. To indicate that you appreciate a post on this site, you upvote the post.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- T_S_ 16y agoI'm guessing this fellow is just a little different, and very very stubborn. That might also be the reason he solved the problem.
- keefe 16y agoand what would tesla have accomplished if he had just taken money seriously, rather than spending years digging ditches (literally)? If someone offers you a million dollars and you don't take it, you're acting totally insane (unless you already have several million laying about).
- greyman 16y agoBut have you thought about this: Why it is that no one with the mentality you are presenting here was able to solve that millenium problem? Maybe it was solvable only by someone you would call "insane". Same with Tesla - if he had taken money seriously, it's probable that he would accomplish less, because everyone has only a limited capacity for things one can "take seriously". He just took other things seriously (and was quite successfull with those).
- keefe 16y ago>Why it is that no one with the mentality you are presenting here was able to solve that millenium problem? I obviously can't answer why this one guy got there first. Plenty of people with a sane attitude about money have solved significant problems, Edison for example. >it's probable that he would accomplish less There's no reason to believe this. There's a wide spectrum of how much energy you have to put into things. It's certainly true that there are only so many hours in a day, but why does handling the unpleasant necessities of life (proper nutrition, exercise, basic money management) sanely have to be a net loss? You don't have to be a dollar hungry millionaire in the making, just use basic common sense. Einstein for example lived a sane and competent life. So did Niels Bohr and Stephen Hawking and numerous other people that made enormous contributions.
- deleted 16y ago
- itistoday 16y agoThere was fascinating discussion about this already on HN (several times), anyone have links to those discussions?
- obsaysditto 16y agoPerhaps... http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1213150 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1213150
- ronnier 16y agoThat's it, which includes a link to a very detailed article that anyone interested in this subject should read: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/08/28/060828fa_fact2 http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/08/28/060828fa_fact2
- lancebailey 16y agoclearly he didn't do it for the money
- mumrah 16y agoAssuming he doesn't care for the money, it seems like this waste of an opportunity to help some people - and rather selfish. Perhaps the Clay institute will do something good with the money (scholarships?)
- tyweir 16y ago"According to Carlson [Head of Clay], the money will be sent to a charity foundation if Perelman does not claim it within one year."
- zandorg 16y agoAnyone got a fake ID and a false beard?
- gaustin 16y agoNo, but I've got a fake beard and a false ID. Will that do?
- nkassis 16y agoIs this a abelian group? I know I know terrible joke.
- pier0 16y agoCan you count in Russian?
- JabavuAdams 16y agoadeen dva tree chiteeriet piat shess sem vosem dyevit dyesit I can has prize now?
- eru 16y agoTry: один, два, три, четыри, пять, шесть, семь, восемь, девять, десять.
- JabavuAdams 16y agoFrom the limited amount I've read about this, he seems to believe that academic mathematics is corrupt and unethical. Basically, he objects to the whole machinery that would award him this prize.
- Jun8 16y agoThat and he feels slighted by other researchers, especially Shing-Tung Yau. Edit: If you're interested about Yau, here's a NYT article (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/science/17yau.html?_r=1 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/science/17yau.html?_r=1) "But even his admirers say he has a political side. “As Shiing-Shen Chern’s successor as emperor of Chinese mathematics,” Deane Yang, a professor of mathematics at Polytechnic University in Brooklyn and an old family friend, wrote in a letter to The New Yorker, “Yau has an outsized ego and great ambition, and has done things that dismay his peers.” But, Dr. Yang said, Dr. Yau has been a major force for good in mathematics and in China, a prodigious teacher who has trained 39 Ph.D.’s."
- abstractbill 16y agoIn my experience the best revenge is usually to live a happy life. If it was me, I'd use the $1M to do that. Even assuming he's completely non-materialistic, I find it hard to imagine there's nothing Perelman could spend the money on that would make him even a little happier.
- mwerty 16y agoTaking it would likely change him in undesirable ways for a net negative effect on happiness.
- motters 16y agoTo a mathematician, some things are far more important than mere money. Accepting tribute money from an organisation you believed to be fundamentally corrupt would be to become one of the very people you despise.
- zavulon 16y agoProbably the only man in the world who doesn't care about money (and not just saying that)
- Daishiman 16y agoHow little of the world you've seen then.
- frou_dh 16y agoOr the only one you've heard of?
- zavulon 16y agoI've heard many people say the same thing, but I'm not sure I would necessarily believe them without proof. Him, I believe.
- milkshakes 16y agothere's a difference between (not) caring about money, and rejecting it on principle
- itjitj 16y agoThink of how many startups he could fund with that! Holy geez!
- nearestneighbor 16y agoWrong title. He ignores the award ceremony. Still has one year to collect the money.
- MrRage 16y agoOn a tangential subject, if it's proven then why keep calling it the Poincare conjecture? It's now a theorem.
- pmiller2 16y agoLikely for the same reason Fermat's Last Theorem was called a theorem for hundreds of years before it was proved. My guess is cultural inertia.
- hugh3 16y agoAh, that's different: Fermat's Last Theorem was called a theorem because Fermat claimed to have proved it. Taking him at his word, it's been a theorem since 1637.
- volodia 16y agoThe Poincare-Perelman theorem. That's how it's probably going to be called.
- eru 16y agoProbably not. In mathematics you can't call things after the people who have invented it, or solved it. (At least that's what my professors said when they had to explain why stuff has strange names. Often the guy who popularizes something gets the name, but fights it.)
- anr 16y agoSylvia Nasar wrote a nice article about the Conjecture: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/08/28/060828fa_fact2 http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/08/28/060828fa_fact2 'Nevertheless, Perelman told Ball that he had no intention of accepting [the Fields Medal]. “I refuse,” he said simply.' I can't help but admire the guy.
- noonespecial 16y agoLike many contented men, he probably just wants to go on doing what he's doing. He rightly intuits that there is no way he can be associated with this prize and have that happen, even if he immediately gave it all away. He's probably annoyed by the whole affair.
- hugh3 16y agoIt's not just contented men, though. Very depressed people will also resist any sort of change to their routine since they assume it will only make matters worse. I can't imagine what it feels like to spend years trying to prove something like the Poincare conjecture, then succeeding, then trying to find something else to do. I don't get the impression that Perelman is a happy man, though.
- Switchfoot 16y agoI think to a point, a lot of us want to believe that Perelman is truly noble and and dedicated to the purity of mathematics. It would serve as a great fable of the modern age. A man challenging the tripe and political aspects of society we have created. If you've read "Perfect Rigor", the book by Masha Gessen, it shows as far as I can tell that some of that is true. He doesn't believe in profiting from mathematics. At the same time, some of the stories make you wonder what he wants from others: When he was 17 he taught at a summer math camp for gifted math kids like himself, he would give 15 year-olds problems that were 2x the normal even for them without consideration to their actual skills and then attempt to deprive them of lunch if they couldn't finish half of it. "A year later, when [the author] asked Rukshin [Perelman's childhood mentor] to get a copy of Morgan and Tian's new book to Perelman, Rukshin demurred; the last time he had tried to pass on a gift from a foreign admirer, he said, Perelman had lobbed the gift-a classical-music CD-at Rukshin's head." Nevertheless, his brilliance at math is undeniable. I just don't think his reasoning is particularly honorable from what I've read of it. Note: I realize the excerpts might be a bit tangential, but I thought it was of some value to mention some of his odd behavior.
- guano___ 16y agoAnd like you said, he was 17 at the time.
- mmphosis 16y agoI don’t use money... and I'm of a mind that everyone who contents themself with trying to maintain a financial state is contenting themself with laziness... aka Nazis. Stop using money. There is nothing more important than knowing that 'predestiny' is real and absolute- in that is truly the end of fear. Consider that a thing can only be a product of it's experience or be a useless goof. Content yourself with pride and I call you out. Content yourself with pride and you are a flailing child without worthy opinion. Pride is goofy. Proud is the last thing anyone of consciousness wants to be. Pride is a lie. Give me my due by considering what I say, lest you be totally without honour... Predestiny is real and absolute. Free-will is not real. Whatever is perceived as a 'choice' can only ever be experience reacting to the now. This is about everything. Consider me. NOW. There is nothing more important than this. This is the truth that saves. GIVE UNTIL YOU DIE David http://www.angelfire.com/apes/hatrackman/money.htm http://www.angelfire.com/apes/hatrackman/money.htm
- thefool 16y agoI think a lot of people are missing the point. He has already decided that he has enough money. That's why he retired, because he saved up enough money to live the rest of his life. It's a very russian mentality (I speak as someone who's parents moved from the USSR a year before I was born).
- edeion 16y agoThis reminds me of Alexander Grothendieck (Fields Medal 1966), who resigned from one of the most prestigious French maths positions (IHES) on ethical grounds. He now lives on reclusion (or the exact opposite of it), as far as is known. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grothendieck http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grothendieck
- olaf 16y agoYessss!!!
- zandorg 16y agoI wrote a cheque but the margin was too small.