The most thorough accounting I've ever read of the story is in The New Yorker, here: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/08/28/060828fa_fact2 http://www.newyo

The most thorough accounting I've ever read of the story is in The New Yorker, here: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/08/28/060828fa_fact2 http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/08/28/060828fa_fact2 Read the article and draw your own conclusions, but it seemed to me that Perelman simply wanted nothing to do with other mathematicians. He seemed to think that accepting the Millenium Prize, the Fields Medal, or a professorship would mean that he would have to participate in a more traditional practice of mathematics, complete with politics and whatnot, and he had no interest in doing so. More specifically, the article discusses the efforts of Yau to examine Perelman's proof, with a view to finding a flaw, fixing it, and ultimately taking credit for the One True Correct Proof of Poincare's conjecture. Whether this is a fair characterization is beyond me, but I would say that Perelman is probably justified in his perception that had he joined mainstream mathematics he would have to spend time defending his ideas from other mathematicians, and I can understand why someone wouldn't want to do that. But a million bucks? I think I'd take the money.