Grigory Perelman biography and discoveries. "Geniuses can not be condemned"
The famous St. Petersburg mathematician Grigory Perelman, who proved the Poincaré conjecture, went to live in Sweden. This writes "Komsomolskaya Pravda" with reference to an anonymous source.
Disappears for months
The legendary scientist, who once shocked the world with his refusal of a million dollar prize for proving the Poincaré hypothesis, still attracts attention to this day. This man with long hair and uncut nails is called the man of the world. He entered the list of the hundred most famous people on the planet. For many years, reporters hunted for a man of mystery who chose the lifestyle of an ascetic in a tiny apartment in St. Petersburg Khrushchev. But only a couple of times it was possible to photograph the recluse going to the store with a string bag. The unsociable genius basically did not want to give an interview.
For the past couple of years, nothing has been heard of him at all. Neighbors assured: periodically Perelman disappears somewhere. He is not seen for weeks and even months. And then came the unexpected news.
"Nothing to live on"
Four years ago, I wrote about the life of Perelman and met a mathematician with whom Grigory Yakovlevich sometimes communicates on scientific topics. This man took his word that we would not reveal his name and made a splash.
No one knows about this yet, but Grigory Yakovlevich recently left for Sweden, he said. - Perelman simply has nothing to live on. He existed on his mother's pension. For many years after the proven Poincaré conjecture, he did not work anywhere. He declared that he was done with science, but he missed it terribly. Petersburg university called him to teach, offering a salary of 17 thousand rubles. Perelman was not satisfied with either the money or the working conditions. Refused. But he secretly hoped that his financial situation would improve over time. He believes that mathematics is “a lonely business” and it is impossible to consider science as a commodity ...
And then a couple of months ago, a Swedish private R&D firm made him an offer he couldn't refuse. He had the opportunity to do what he loves, while receiving a decent salary.
Doing what he loves
Is that really true? I turn to the Israeli TV producer Alexander Zabrovsky. It was he who was eager to make a feature film about Perelman and for several years persuaded the mathematician to agree to this.
Yes, Perelman works in Sweden, it's true, - Zabrovsky confirmed in an informal conversation. - Moreover, it was with my help that Grigory Yakovlevich managed to solve financial problems and find a job he liked.
And how did you help him?
I struggled for a long time to establish more or less friendly relations with Perelman. And he knew in what terrible conditions he lives. At work, I regularly communicate with a Swedish company. And somehow he told the Swedes about the Russian genius. They were suddenly interested. They raised their connections and reported that one private Swedish firm that is engaged in scientific development is ready to hire Perelman. I conveyed their proposal to Grigory Yakovlevich. And he, thinking, agreed. He was given a decent monthly salary, given housing in one of the small towns in Sweden. Now he is doing what he loves and no longer experiences financial problems. Mom went with him. Grigory Yakovlevich's half-sister is also there. Science knows no geographical or national barriers. The main thing is that his mind benefits society and he himself feels good and comfortable.
Work related to nanotechnology
The FMS of St. Petersburg confirmed to us: Mr. Perelman received a passport and a visa for a period of 10 years and traveled to Sweden at the invitation. The documents indicate the reason for the trip - "scientific activity". And for the first time he traveled to Sweden back in 2013. At the same time, the mathematician remains a citizen of Russia.
As Komsomolskaya Pravda found out, Perelman's work schedule is free - there are no restrictions on movement and requirements to appear “in the office” every day. Geographically, it can be anywhere: both in Sweden and in Russia. The work is related to nanotechnology. Grigory Yakovlevich keeps in touch with his employers by phone - they communicate in English, which Perelman knows perfectly well.
Well, perhaps the world will hear about the new achievements of the famous mathematician.
Mathematicians are special people. They are so deeply immersed in abstract worlds that, "returning to Earth", they often cannot adapt to real life and surprise others with unusual views and actions. We will talk about perhaps the most talented and extraordinary of them - Grigory Perelman.
In 1982, sixteen-year-old Grisha Perelman, who had just received a gold medal at the International Mathematical Olympiad in Budapest, entered Leningrad University. He was noticeably different from other students. His supervisor, Professor Yuri Dmitrievich Burago, said: “There are a lot of gifted students who speak before they think. Grisha was not like that. He always thought very carefully and deeply about what he intended to say. He was not very quick in making decisions. The speed of the solution does not mean anything, mathematics is not built on speed. Mathematics depends on depth."
After graduating from the university, Grigory Perelman became an employee of the Steklov Mathematical Institute, published a number of interesting articles on three-dimensional surfaces in Euclidean spaces. The world mathematical community appreciated his achievements on merit. In 1992, Perelman was invited to work at New York University.
Gregory ended up in one of the world's centers of mathematical thought. Every week he went to a seminar in Princeton, where one day he listened to a lecture by the eminent mathematician, professor at Columbia University, Richard Hamilton. After the lecture, Perelman approached the professor and asked a few questions. Perelman later recalled this meeting: “It was very important for me to ask him about something. He smiled and was very patient with me. He even told me a couple of things that he didn't publish until a few years later. He shared it with me without hesitation. I really liked his openness and generosity. I can say that in this Hamilton was not like most other mathematicians.
Perelman spent several years in the USA. He walked around New York in the same corduroy jacket, ate mostly bread, cheese and milk, and worked non-stop. He began to be invited to the most prestigious universities in America. The young man chose Harvard and then faced the fact that he categorically did not like it. The recruitment committee required an autobiography and letters of recommendation from other scientists from the applicant. Perelman's reaction was harsh: “If they know my work, then they don't need my biography. If they want my biography, they don't know my work." He refused all offers and returned to Russia in the summer of 1995, where he continued to work on the ideas that Hamilton developed. In 1996, Perelman was awarded the European Mathematical Society Prize for Young Mathematicians, but he, who did not like any hype, refused to accept it.
When Gregory made some progress in his research, he wrote a letter to Hamilton, hoping for a joint work. However, he did not answer, and Perelman had to proceed alone. But ahead of him was waiting for world fame.
In 2000, the Clay Institute of Mathematics* published a Millennium Problem List, which included seven classic mathematical problems that have been unsolved for many years, and promised a million-dollar prize for proving any of them. Less than two years later, on November 11, 2002, Grigory Perelman published an article on a scientific website on the Internet, in which he summed up his many years of efforts to prove one problem from the list on 39 pages. American mathematicians, who knew Perelman personally, immediately began to discuss the article, which proved the famous Poincaré conjecture. The scientist was invited to several US universities to give a course of lectures on his proof, and in April 2003 he flew to America. There, Gregory held several seminars, where he showed how he managed to turn the Poincaré conjecture into a theorem. The mathematical community recognized Perelman's lectures as an extremely important event and made significant efforts to verify the proposed proof.
Paradoxically, Perelman did not receive grants to prove the Poincaré hypothesis, and other scientists who tested his correctness received grants worth a million dollars. Verification was extremely important, because many mathematicians worked on the proof of this problem, and if it was really solved, then they remained out of work.
The mathematical community tested Perelman's proof for several years and by 2006 came to the conclusion that it was correct. Yuri Burago then wrote: “The proof closes a whole branch of mathematics. After it, many scientists will have to switch to research in other areas.”
Mathematics has always been considered the most rigorous and precise science, where there is no place for emotions and intrigues. But even here there is a struggle for priority. Passions boiled around the proof of the Russian mathematician. Two young mathematicians, immigrants from China, having studied the work of Perelman, published a much more voluminous and detailed - more than three hundred pages - article with a proof of the Poincaré conjecture. In it, they argued that Perelman's work contains many gaps that they managed to fill. According to the rules of the mathematical community, the priority in proving a theorem belongs to those researchers who managed to present it in the most complete form. In the opinion of many experts, Perelman's proof was complete, although brief. More detailed calculations did not bring anything new to it.
When journalists asked Perelman what he thought about the position of Chinese mathematicians, Grigory replied: “I cannot say that I am outraged, the rest are doing even worse. Of course, there are many more or less honest mathematicians. But almost all of them are conformists. They themselves are honest, but they tolerate those who are not.” He then noted bitterly: “It is not those who violate ethical standards in science that are considered outsiders. People like me are the ones who end up in isolation.”
In 2006, Grigory Perelman was awarded the highest award in the field of mathematics - the Fields Prize **. But the mathematician, leading a solitary, even reclusive lifestyle, refused to receive it. It was a real scandal. The President of the International Mathematical Union even flew to St. Petersburg and persuaded Perelman for ten hours to accept a well-deserved award, which was planned to be presented at the Congress of Mathematicians on August 22, 2006 in Madrid in the presence of the Spanish King Juan Carlos I and three thousand participants. This congress was supposed to be a historic event, but Perelman politely but adamantly said: "I refuse." The Fields medal, according to Gregory, did not interest him at all: “It does not matter. Everyone understands that if the proof is correct, then no other recognition of merit is required.
In 2010, the Clay Institute awarded Perelman the promised million-dollar prize for proving the Poincaré conjecture, which was going to be presented to him at a mathematical conference in Paris. Perelman refused a million dollars and did not go to Paris.
As he himself explained, he does not like the ethical atmosphere in the mathematical community. In addition, he considered the contribution of Richard Hamilton no less. The winner of many mathematical prizes, the Soviet, American and French mathematician M. L. Gromov supported Perelman: “For great things, a clear mind is needed. You have to think only about mathematics. Everything else is human weakness. To accept a reward is to show weakness."
The rejection of a million dollars made Perelman even more famous. Many asked him to receive the prize and give it to them. Gregory did not respond to such requests.
Until now, the proof of the Poincare conjecture remains the only solved problem from the list of the millennium. Perelman became the number one mathematician in the world, although he refused to contact his colleagues. Life has shown that outstanding results in science were often achieved by individuals who were not part of the structure of modern science. That was Einstein. Working as a clerk in the patent office, he created the theory of relativity, developed the theory of the photoelectric effect and the principle of operation of lasers. This was Perelman, who neglected the rules of conduct in the scientific community and at the same time achieved the maximum efficiency of his work, proving the Poincaré hypothesis.
From the book Nick. Gorky "Undiscovered Worlds". - St. Petersburg: "Astrel". 2018.
The strangeness of a great man is commensurate with his genius. Therefore, when the mathematical world learned that the unsociable Petersburg mathematician Grigory Yakovlevich Perelman refused a million dollar prize for proving the Poincare conjecture, everyone understood that a new Carl Friedrich Gauss had appeared in Russia, hiding his discovery of non-Euclidean geometry in secret.
The story is like this. In 2006, Science magazine called Perelman's proof of the Poincaré theorem a scientific breakthrough, and a year later, the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph published a list of "One Hundred Living Geniuses" in which Grigory Perelman takes 9th place. In addition to Perelman, only 2 Russians made it to this list - Garry Kasparov and Mikhail Kalashnikov.
The discovery of G. Perelman was awarded the highest mathematical award - the international award "Fields Medal", equivalent to the Nobel Prize (there is no Nobel Prize for work in the field of mathematics, as you know). The official wording of the award was: "For his contribution to geometry and his revolutionary ideas in the study of the geometric and analytical structure of the Ricci flow"). And in March 2010, the Clay Mathematical Institute awarded Grigory Perelman a prize of one million US dollars for proving the Poincaré conjecture. This was the first ever award for solving one of the Millennium Challenges. So: Perelman refused both Fields and the award, motivating it as follows: “I refused. You know, I had a lot of reasons in both directions. That's why it took me so long to decide. In short, the main reason is disagreement with the organized mathematical community. I do not like their decisions, I consider them unfair. I believe that the contribution to the solution of this problem by the American mathematician Hamilton is no less than mine.
My task does not include either the analysis of the Poincaré problem or Perelman's argumentation (see Appendix) - these questions are far from the understanding of the "intellectual majority", which, if they are interested in Perelmans, is not their discoveries, but their deviations from the norm. And Perelman’s deviations from the norm really overflowed: an unsociable man-mystery, who voluntarily left a prestigious job, who chose the lifestyle of an ascetic in a tiny apartment in a St. giving interviews and living from bread and water on the beggarly pension of an elderly mother and only once declared: "There is nothing to live on."
I am not saying that the motherland abandoned its hero. They say that some St. Petersburg university called him to teach, offering a failed millionaire a salary of $ 300. Perelman refused a miserable handout, believing that it was impossible to consider science as a commodity ...
However, the point is not in the evaluation of labor, but in moral criteria and in something else secret. Because for all the oddities of this undeniably great man, he agreed to work in a Swedish company engaged in scientific development and guaranteeing him a decent life, comfortable housing and doing what he loves.
Israeli television producer Alexander Zabrovsky, who was eager to make a feature film about Perelman and for several years persuaded the mathematician to agree to this, said that it was he who helped Grigory Yakovlevich find a job to his liking and solve his financial problems:
- He was given a decent monthly salary, given housing in one of the small towns in Sweden. Now he is doing what he loves and no longer experiences material problems. Mom went with him. Grigory Yakovlevich's half-sister is also there. Science knows no geographical or national barriers. The main thing is that his mind benefits society and he himself feels good and comfortable. The work is related to nanotechnology.
Perelman received a passport and a visa for a period of 10 years, the documents indicate the reason for the trip - "scientific activity."
Vladimir Fok, professor of mathematics at the University of Strasbourg, comments on the situation: “Russian scientists have 2 main troubles - very low wages and dependence on an incompetent administration. People who have nothing to do with science like to put a spoke in the wheel, although they should help.
I myself went to Strasbourg for this reason, although I tried to stay in Russia, I worked on temporary contracts. But my institute, in my opinion, ceased to exist as a scientific institution and I was forced to emigrate. Now about 80% of students go abroad. And eminent scientists are also leaving the country. To all the difficulties of a scientist, public condemnation is added - for us, being a man of science is the same as being a fool. While in the West such a social status commands respect.”
Apparently, Grigory Yakovlevich decided to be closer to his native people, to his sister, who also received a mathematical education. He took his old mother with him.
I feel infinitely sorry for Grisha's mother, - Sergey Rukshin, a teacher and friend of the Fields laureate, commented on the situation. - She has long needed good medicines, special care, which Grisha could not provide. I, other people who knew him closely offered help more than once, including material, but he constantly refused. With money, he is always extremely scrupulous.
It is practically impossible to stop emigration from Russia. Western countries still look attractive to the inhabitants of a ruined country. This applies both to material well-being and to the stability associated with the observance of civil liberties and peace, to which intellectuals are drawn. The loss in the 20th century of millions of its fellow citizens, and far from the worst, is a very bitter lesson for Russia.
Academician Ludwig Faddeev, director of the Mathematical Institute. V.A.Steklova, in one of the issues of the journal “In the world of science” (2014, No. 2) wrote: “Our institute had 110 employees, of which 70 were doctors. 40 left.” That is, more than half of the scientists of the highest qualification emigrated ... They did not just leave, they changed the face of the science of sciences - foreign mathematics ... "
at the Institute for High Pressure Physics. Vereshchagin RAS in 1988, 700 people worked, now - 150 ... In my NSC KIPT - 6500, now - 2300 ...
The number of highly qualified specialists who left Russia more than doubled in three years - from 20,000 people in 2013 to 44,000 people in 2016. Nikolai Dolgushkin, Chief Scientific Secretary of the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences, spoke about this at a general meeting of the Russian Academy of Sciences. "The average age of a researcher has exceeded 50 years, and one in three has reached retirement age," he added. “Since 1990, the number of researchers in the country has decreased by 2.7 times, and the average annual reduction in personnel involved in research and development has been 1.3% per year since 2000,” Dolgushkin said. In the European Union and the United States, the number of scientists has increased by 2-3% during this time, and in Brazil, Korea and China - from 7% to 10%.
Russian economist Leonid Grigoriev said that "two million democrats have left Russia in the last ten years," while Alexander Shchetinin called the brain drain "an escape from the zombie empire." The author of the article “The Massive Flight of Russians from Russia” (http://besttoday.ru/read/5404.html) writes: “We have become a third world country in terms of infrastructure and security. We do not have normal schools, hospitals and universities. Any contact with the state requires money, nerves and papers, and more and more. Literally any part of the free living space is filled with bureaucratic instructions, just as in a locked room oxygen is displaced by carbon dioxide. And when the people who gave Russia kirdyk explain to us what the problem is, they say: "It's because there are enemies around."
The number of people employed in science only from 1991 to 1999 in Russia has more than halved (from 878.5 thousand to 386.8 thousand people), and tens of thousands of Russian scientists have moved to the United States alone. According to official statistics, up to 60% of Russians - winners of international Olympiads - leave to work abroad. The most serious situation has developed in applied areas: the best specialists leave for foreign companies.
A few specific examples. Mikhail Leonidovich Gromov is a world-famous mathematician, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, laureate of the Abel Prize. Emigrated in 1974 to the USA. The Abel Prize in mathematics is also considered the equivalent of the Nobel Prize. It was awarded to Mikhail Leonidovich Gromov for "his revolutionary contribution to geometry".
David (Dmitry Aleksandrovich) Kazhdan is an Israeli, former Soviet and American mathematician. He emigrated from the USSR in the mid-1970s to the United States, in 2002 he moved to Israel. David Kazhdan is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Israeli Academy of Sciences. In 2012 he became a laureate of the State Prize in Mathematics and Informatics. Professor Kazhdan made a great contribution to the development of group theory, which is the cornerstone of mathematics, but its provisions also extend to physics, quantum theory and computer science.
Voevodsky Vladimir Alexandrovich is a Russian and American mathematician, one of the most prominent modern scientists and innovators in the field of algebraic geometry. In 2002, Vladimir Voevodsky won the John Fields Prize, the highest prize of the International Congress of Mathematicians. After graduating from Moscow State University, he completed an internship at Harvard and emigrated to the United States. Now he is a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton.
Andrei Konstantinovich Geim is a famous physicist, Nobel Prize winner in physics in 2010, a member of the Royal Society of London, known as one of the discoverers of graphene, a two-dimensional allotropic modification of carbon. On December 31, 2011, by decree of Queen Elizabeth II, for services to science, he was awarded the title of knight with the official right to add the title "sir" to his name. The achievements of graduates of the Institute of Physics and Technology Andrey Geim and Konstantin Novoselov are now proud of as their own in the UK.
Abrikosov Aleksey Alekseevich - the most famous physicist, Nobel Prize winner in physics (2003), Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences. The main work was done in the field of condensed matter physics. In 1991 he moved to the USA.
Lev Petrovich Gorkov - Soviet-American physicist, Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences. In 1991, Gorkov immigrated to the United States, where he worked at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and then director of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida. In 2005, Lev Petrovich was elected a member of the US National Academy of Sciences.
Simon Smith Smith is an economist, statistician, demographer, and economic historian. Winner of the 1971 Nobel Prize in Economics "for an empirically based interpretation of economic growth that has led to a new and deeper understanding of the economic and social structure and development process in general." The name of Kuznets is associated with the formation of economics as an empirical scientific discipline and the development of quantitative economic history.
Leonid Solomonovich Gurvich - economist, professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota. He served on the Coles Commission and was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Economics. Known as one of the founders of the theory of optimal mechanisms.
Professor Andrey Gudkov, Senior Vice-President of the Oncological Institute. Roswell Park, Buffalo, USA, author of more than a hundred scientific papers in the field of cancer treatment writes:
- You can talk about the feeling of gratitude and duty to the society that raised you, gave you knowledge. For me, such an unpaid debt is, first of all, an education that I could pass on to young people while living in Russia. But, on the other hand, I am sincerely convinced that I bring more benefit to science with my work abroad, since the technical capabilities and speed available there make it possible to achieve incomparable results in a unit of time. I am happy where I work now. There are about 40 Russian-speaking families in Buffalo - we are creating a micro-society, no one is forcing us to change our culture. There is no ideology here, we are trying to work in the Russian Federation, but it is unlikely that I will return: firstly, I am many years old, and secondly, it seems to me that it is more useful to continue an existing business than to start something anew here.
Today's Russia is still not able to compete for talents in the global labor market, so scientists prefer to look for work abroad - these are the findings of a Boston Consulting Group study, which was attended by 24,000 respondents from Russia. According to the results of this study: exactly half of Russian scientists, as well as 52% of top managers, 54% of IT specialists, 49% of engineering specialists and 46% of doctors seek to get a job abroad. 65% of potential expats are classified as “digital talents”: AI specialists, scrum masters, user interface designers, etc. Moreover, 57% of them are young people under the age of 30. For students, this share reaches 59%. “To work in Russia is to swim without water”, “Study, study and rush off” - these are the slogans of the paravalitics.
Among the reasons for leaving are: the growth of qualifications, a higher standard of living and the expansion of career opportunities. In addition, reasons such as economic instability in the home country and better quality of public services abroad - in health care, education and childcare - were often cited.
Every year, 100,000 people leave Russia for developed countries, according to RANEPA data. This figure, given by the host countries, is 7 times higher than the official figure of Rosstat.
In October 2009, scientists who left Russia in the early 90s and made a successful career abroad wrote an open letter to the President and Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, drawing attention to the disastrous state of fundamental science in the country and the consequence of this problem - a massive outflow of scientists abroad . On the same days, 407 doctors of sciences working at the institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) wrote an open letter similar in content to the authorities of the country. Two letters to the same address, sent from different parts of the planet, are the last desperate attempts to save Russian science.
“Due to the age structure of scientific and pedagogical personnel, Russia has 5-7 years left for qualified scientists and teachers of the older generation to have time to prepare a new generation for science, education and high-tech industries. If it is not possible to attract young people to the scientific and educational sphere within these terms, then the plans for building an innovative economy will have to be forgotten ... ”- write 407 doctors of science from academic institutions in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Ivanovo and other Russian cities. Solidarity with colleagues and Russian scientists who went abroad and took place there. “The regression of science continues, the scale and severity of the danger of this process are underestimated. The level of funding for Russian science contrasts sharply with the corresponding indicators of developed countries.” Indeed, in Soviet times, the budget of the Academy of Sciences was equal to 2% of GDP, and now it is less than 0.3%.
APPENDIX ON THE POINCARE HYPOTHESIS
The problem solved by Perelman belongs to the branch of mathematics called topology. It is often referred to as "rubber sheet geometry". It deals with the properties of geometric shapes that are preserved if the shape is stretched, twisted, bent. In other words, it is deformed without breaks, cuts and glues.
Topology is important for mathematics and mathematical physics because it allows us to understand the properties of space. Or evaluate it without being able to look at the shape of this space from the outside. For example, our universe.
To explain the Poincare conjecture, it is necessary: to imagine a two-dimensional sphere - a rubber circle stretched over a ball. Similarly, you can pull off a sports backpack with a cord. The result is a sphere: from the outside - three-dimensional, but from the point of view of mathematics - only two-dimensional. Then they offer to pull the same circle on a donut. It seems to work. But the edges of the disk will converge into a circle, which can no longer be pulled into a point - it will cut the donut.
What follows is much more complicated: we must imagine a three-dimensional sphere stretched over a four-dimensional ball. As another Russian mathematician, Vladimir Uspensky, wrote, “unlike two-dimensional spheres, three-dimensional spheres are inaccessible to our direct observation, and it is as difficult for us to imagine them as it is for Vasily Ivanovich from the well-known anecdote a square trinomial.”
So, according to the Poincaré hypothesis, a three-dimensional sphere is the only three-dimensional thing whose surface can be pulled into one point by some kind of hypothetical "hypercord". Jules Henri Poincare suggested this in 1904. Now Perelman convinced all topologists that the great French mathematician was right. And turned his hypothesis into a theorem.
The proof helps to understand what shape our universe has. And it allows us to quite reasonably assume that it is the same three-dimensional sphere. But if the Universe is the only "figure" that can be contracted into a point, then, probably, it can also be stretched from a point. Which serves as an indirect confirmation of the Big Bang theory, which claims that the Universe originated just from the point.
Exactly 15 years ago, a St. Petersburg scientist proved the Poincaré conjecture.
On November 11, 2002, an article by a St. Petersburg mathematics Grigory Perelman, in which he gave proofs of the Poincaré conjecture.
Thus, the hypothesis became the first solved problem of the millennium - the so-called mathematical questions, the answers to which cannot be found for many years.
Eight years later, the Clay Mathematical Institute awarded the scientist a prize of one million US dollars for this achievement, but Perelman refused it, saying that he did not need money and, moreover, did not agree with the official mathematical community.
The refusal of a poor mathematician from a large sum caused surprise in all sectors of society. For this and for his reclusive lifestyle, Perelman is called the strangest Russian scientist. We learned how Grigory Perelman lives and what he does today.
Mathematician #1
Now Grigory Perelman is 51 years old. The scientist leads a secluded life: he practically does not leave the house, does not give interviews and is not officially employed anywhere. The mathematician never had close friends, but people who are familiar with Perelman say that he was not always like that.
“I remember Grisha as a teenager,” says Perelman’s housemate, Sergey Krasnov. – Although we live on different floors, we see each other sometimes. Previously, they could talk to his mother, Lyubov Leibovna, but now I rarely see her. He and Grigory periodically go out for a walk, but they are always at home. When we see each other, they will nod quickly and move on. They don't communicate with anyone. And in his school years, Grisha was no different from other boys. Of course, even then he was actively interested in science and spent a lot of time reading books, but he also found time for other things. He studied music, went out with friends, went in for sports. And then he sacrificed all his interests to mathematics. Was it worth it? Don't know".
Grigory always took first place in mathematics olympiads, but one day victory eluded him: in the eighth grade at the All-Union Olympiad, Perelman became only second. Since then, he has given up all his hobbies and recreation, immersing himself in books, reference books and encyclopedias. He soon caught up and became the #1 young mathematician in the country.
retreat
Krasnov declares: none of the tenants of their house doubted that Perelman would become a great scientist. “When we learned that Grisha proved the Poincaré hypothesis, which no one in the world could do, we were not even surprised,” the pensioner admits. - Of course, they were very happy for him, they decided: finally, Grigory will break into the people, make a dizzying career! Well done, he deserves it! But he chose a different path for himself."
Perelman refused a million dollar cash prize, justifying his decision by disagreeing with the official mathematical community, while adding that he did not need money.
After the name of Perelman thundered all over the world, the mathematician was invited to the USA. In America, the scientist gave presentations, exchanged experience with foreign colleagues and explained his methods for solving mathematical problems. Publicity quickly bored him. Returning to Russia, Perelman voluntarily left the post of leading researcher in the laboratory of mathematical physics, resigned from the St. Petersburg branch of the Steklov Mathematical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and reduced his communication with colleagues to zero
A few years later, they wanted to make Perelman a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, but he refused. Having stopped almost all contacts with the outside world, the scientist locked himself in his apartment in Kupchino, on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, where he lives with his mother.
“Grisha was tortured with attention”
Now a mathematician very rarely leaves the house and spends whole days solving new problems. “Grisha and his mother live on the same pension of Lyubov Leibovna,” says Krasnov. - We, the residents of the house, in no way condemn Grisha - they say that the man is in the prime of life, but he does not bring money to the family, he does not help his old mother. There is no such. He is a genius, and geniuses cannot be condemned. Once they even wanted to chip in with the whole house, to help them financially.But they refused - they said that they had enough. Lyubov Leibovna always said that Grisha was unpretentious: he wore jackets or boots for decades, and for dinner he had enough macaroni and cheese. Well, you don't have to, you don't have to."
According to the neighbors, any person in Perelman's place would become unsociable and closed: although the mathematician has not given cause for discussion for a long time, his person still cannot be ignored.
Grigory Yakovlevich Perelman(b. June 13, 1966, Leningrad, USSR) - outstanding, the first to prove the Poincare conjecture.
Grigory Perelman was born on June 13, 1966 in Leningrad into a Jewish family. His father Yakov was an electrical engineer and emigrated to Israel in 1993. Mother, Lyubov Leibovna, remained in St. Petersburg, worked as a mathematics teacher at a vocational school. It was the mother, who played the violin, who instilled in the future mathematician a love for classical music.
Until the 9th grade, Perelman studied at a secondary school on the outskirts of the city, however, in the 5th grade, he began studying at the mathematical center at the Palace of Pioneers under the guidance of an associate professor at the Russian State Pedagogical University Sergei Rukshin, whose students won many awards at mathematical olympiads. In 1982, as part of a team of Soviet schoolchildren, he won a gold medal at the International Mathematical Olympiad in Budapest, receiving a full score for the perfect solution of all problems. Perelman graduated from the 239th Physics and Mathematics School in Leningrad. He played table tennis well, attended a music school. I didn’t get a gold medal only because of physical education, without passing the TRP standards.
He was enrolled without exams in the Faculty of Mathematics and Mechanics of the Leningrad State University. He won faculty, city and all-Union student mathematical Olympiads. All the years I studied only "excellently". For academic success, he received a Lenin scholarship. After graduating with honors from the university, he entered graduate school (supervisor - Academician A. D. Aleksandrov) at the Leningrad Department of the Mathematical Institute. V. A. Steklova (LOMI - until 1992; then - POMI). Having defended his Ph.D. thesis in 1990, he remained to work at the institute as a senior researcher.
In the early 1990s, Perelman came to the United States, where he worked as a researcher at various universities, where one of the most difficult, at that time not yet solved, problems of modern mathematics, the Poincaré Conjecture, attracted his attention. He surprised his colleagues with the austerity of life, his favorite food was milk, bread and cheese. In 1996 he returned to St. Petersburg, continuing to work at POMI, where he worked alone on solving the Poincare Problem.
In 2002-2003, Grigory Perelman published his three famous articles on the Internet, in which he summarized his original method for solving the Poincare Problem:
- The entropy formula for the Ricci flow and its geometric applications
- Ricci flow with surgery on three-manifolds
- Finite extinction time for the solutions to the Ricci flow on certain three-manifolds
The appearance on the Internet of Perelman's first article on the entropy formula for the Ricci flow caused an immediate international sensation in scientific circles. In 2003, Grigory Perelman accepted an invitation to visit a number of American universities, where he made a series of presentations on his work in proving the Poincare Problem. In America, Perelman spent a lot of time explaining his ideas and methods both in public lectures organized for him and during personal meetings with a number of mathematicians. After his return to Russia, he answered numerous questions from his foreign colleagues by e-mail.
In 2004-2006, three independent groups of mathematicians were engaged in verification of Perelman's results: 1) Bruce Kleiner, John Lott, University of Michigan; 2) Zhu Xiping, Sun Yat-sen University, Cao Huaidong, Lehai University; 3) John Morgan, Columbia University, Gan Tian, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. All three groups concluded that the Poincaré problem had been successfully solved, but the Chinese mathematicians Zhu Xiping and Cao Huaidong, along with their teacher Yau Xingtang, attempted to plagiarize, claiming that they had found a "complete proof". They subsequently retracted this statement.
In December 2005, Grigory Perelman resigned as a leading researcher at the Laboratory of Mathematical Physics, resigned from POMI, and almost completely cut off contacts with colleagues.
He showed no interest in a further scientific career. Currently, he lives in Kupchino in the same apartment with his mother, leads a secluded life, ignores the press.
Scientific contribution
Main article: Poincare conjecture
In 1994 he proved the hypothesis about the soul (differential geometry).
Grigory Perelman, in addition to his outstanding natural talent, being a representative of the Leningrad school of geometry, at the beginning of his work on the Poincaré Problem, had a broader scientific outlook than his foreign colleagues. In addition to other major mathematical innovations that made it possible to overcome all the difficulties faced by mathematicians dealing with this problem, Perelman developed and applied the purely Leningrad theory of Aleksandrov spaces to the analysis of Ricci flows. In 2002, Perelman first published his pioneering work on solving one of the special cases of William Thurston's geometrization conjecture, from which the validity of the famous Poincare conjecture, formulated by the French mathematician, physicist and philosopher Henri Poincaré in 1904, follows. The method described by the scientist for studying the Ricci flow is called Hamilton-Perelman theories.
Recognition and ratings
In 1996 he was awarded the European Mathematical Society Prize for Young Mathematicians, but refused to receive it.
In 2006, Grigory Perelman was awarded the international prize "Fields Medal" for solving the Poincare conjecture (the official wording of the award: "For his contribution to geometry and his revolutionary ideas in the study of the geometric and analytical structure of the Ricci flow"), but he refused it.
In 2006, the journal Science named the proof of Poincaré's theorem the Scientific Breakthrough of the Year. Breakthrough of the Year). This is the first work in mathematics that has earned such a title.
In 2006, Sylvia Nazar and David Gruber published Manifold Destiny, which talks about Grigory Perelman, his work on the Poincare Problem, ethical principles in science and the mathematical community, and includes a rare interview with him. The article devotes considerable space to the criticism of the Chinese mathematician Yau Xingtang, who, together with his students, tried to challenge the completeness of the proof of the Poincare Conjecture proposed by Grigory Perelman. From an interview with Grigory Perelman:
In 2006, The New York Times published an article by Dennis Overbye, Scientist at Work: Shing-Tung Yau. The Emperor of Math. The article is devoted to the biography of Professor Yau Shintang and the scandal associated with accusations against him of trying to belittle Perelman's contribution to the proof of the Poincaré Hypothesis. The article cites a fact unheard of in mathematics - Yau Shintang hired a law firm to defend his case and threatened to sue his critics.
In 2007, the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph published a list of "One Hundred Living Geniuses", in which Grigory Perelman takes 9th place. In addition to Perelman, only 2 Russians made it to this list - Garry Kasparov (25th place) and Mikhail Kalashnikov (83rd place).
In March 2010, the Clay Mathematical Institute awarded Grigory Perelman a $1 million prize for proving the Poincaré conjecture, the first ever award for solving a Millennium Problem. In June 2010, Perelman ignored a mathematical conference in Paris, which was supposed to present the Millennium Prize for proving the Poincaré conjecture, and on July 1, 2010 he publicly announced his refusal of the prize, motivating it as follows:
Note that such a public assessment of the merits of Richard Hamilton by a mathematician who proved the Poincare Conjecture may be an example of nobility in science, since, according to Perelman himself, Hamilton, who collaborated with Yau Shintan, noticeably slowed down in his research, faced with insurmountable technical difficulties.
In September 2011, the Clay Institute, together with the Henri Poincaré Institute (Paris), established a position for young mathematicians, the money for which will come from the Millennium Prize awarded, but not accepted by Grigory Perelman.
In 2011, Richard Hamilton and Demetrios Christodoul were awarded the so-called. The $1,000,000 Shao Prize in Mathematics, also sometimes referred to as the Nobel Prize of the East. Richard Hamilton was awarded for the creation of a mathematical theory, which was then developed by Grigory Perelman in his work on the proof of the Poincaré conjecture. It is known that Hamilton accepted this award.
Interesting Facts
- In his work "The entropy formula for the Ricci flow and its geometric applications" (Eng. The entropy formula for the Ricci flow and its geometric applications) Grigory Perelman, not without humor, modestly points out that his work was partially funded by personal savings saved during his visits to the Courant Institute for Mathematical Sciences, the State University of New York (SUNY), the State University of New York at Stony Brook and the University of California to Berkeley, and thanks the organizers of these trips. At the same time, millions of grants were allocated by the official mathematical community for individual research groups in order to understand and test Perelman's work.
- When a member of the hiring committee at Stanford University asked Perelman for C.V. (summary), as well as letters of recommendation, Perelman opposed:
- The article Manifold Destiny was noticed by the eminent mathematician Vladimir Arnold, who offered to reprint it in the Moscow journal Uspekhi matematicheskikh nauk, where he was a member of the editorial board. The editor-in-chief of the magazine, Sergei Novikov, refused him. According to Arnold, the refusal was due to the fact that the editor-in-chief of the magazine was afraid of revenge from Yau, since he also worked in the United States.
- The biographical book of Masha Gessen tells about the fate of Perelman “Perfect severity. Grigory Perelman: genius and the task of the millennium, based on numerous interviews with his teachers, classmates, colleagues and colleagues. Perelman's teacher Sergei Rukshin was critical of the book.
- Grigory Perelman became the protagonist of the documentary film "The Enchantment of the Poincaré Hypothesis" directed by Masahito Kasugi, filmed by the Japanese public broadcaster NHK in 2008.
- In April 2010, the release of the “Millionaire from Khrushchev” talk show “Let them talk” was dedicated to Grigory Perelman. Grigory's friends, his school teachers, as well as journalists who communicated with Perelman took part in it.
- In the 27th edition of "Big Difference" on Channel One, a parody was presented in the hall on Grigory Perelman. The role of Perelman was simultaneously performed by 9 actors.
- It is a common misconception that the father of Grigory Yakovlevich Perelman is Yakov Isidorovich Perelman, a well-known popularizer of physics, mathematics and astronomy. However, Ya. I. Perelman died more than 20 years before the birth of Grigory Perelman.
- On April 28, 2011, Komsomolskaya Pravda reported that Perelman gave an interview to Alexander Zabrovsky, executive producer of the Moscow film company President Film, and agreed to shoot a feature film about him. Masha Gessen, however, doubts that these claims are true. Vladimir Gubailovsky also believes that the interview with Perelman is fictitious.
