> 1. If he didn't turn down the money, you wouldn't have heard of him at all; Perelman provided a proof of the Poincare Conjecture, which had stumped mathemati

> 1. If he didn't turn down the money, you wouldn't have heard of him at all; Perelman provided a proof of the Poincare Conjecture, which had stumped mathematicians for a century. It was also one of the seven Millenium problems https://www.claymath.org/millennium-problems/ https://www.claymath.org/millennium-problems/, and as of 2024, the only one to be solved. Andrew Wiles became pretty well known after proving Fermat's last theorem, despite there not being an financial reward.