who solved that difficult math problem?

Question

I heard that there is a Russian mathmetician who solved one of the most difficult unsolved equation. He left his job and focused only on this problem for 7 years. Anybody know this story..and his name?

Answer 1

Perelman proved the Thurston conjecture which in turn implied the Poincare conjecture.
The Poincare conjecture says that any simply connected compact 3-dimensional manifold is homeomorphic to the 3-dimensional sphere S^3, which is the boundary of the 4-dimensional ball.
S^3={x in R^4 : ||x||=1}
A space is simply connected if any closed loop on it can be continuously retracted to a point. Compact basically means closed and bounded.

He was awarded the Fields Medal in Math (equivalent to the Nobel prize since there is no Nobel prize in math because Alfred Nobel's wife cheated on him with a mathematician (OK maybe that's just a rumor)) and did not accept it. He is also elligable to get one million dollars for solving one of the Clay Institute's 7 one million dollar problems (the Poincare Conjecture was one of the problems). It is not yet clear whether or not he will accept the million dollars.

Answer 2

Yep the guy is Perelman but he did not quit his job to work on this problem. He was a visiting professor at UC Berkeley a while ago and more recently he worked in a Russian institute in St. Petersburg. He very recently quit his job due to his dissatisfaction with the mathematical community's lack of a strong reaction to what he considers an effort to downplay his contributions to the proof by another famous mathematician named Yau.

As for the Nobel of mathematics, yep Fields medal is just that and a bit more, but the reason for the lack of a Nobel for Mathematics has nothing to do with his wife cheating Nobel. Actually Nobel did not have a wife. Most historians believe that Nobel just did not find mathematics useful enough to dedicate an award to.

Answer 3

That's crazy.

I would have given up after 20 minutes.

Answer 4

http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/West/01/07/math.mystery.ap/index.html