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03-23-2010, 06:08 AM #1
Math genius lives with roaches, rejects $1.1Mprize
A Russian man billed as the world's smartest man has turned down a $1.1 million prize for solving a mathematical equation, despite living in a bare, cockroach-infested flat.
Grigory Perelman, 44, said he had all he wanted, despite living as a recluse in an untidy apartment in St Petersburg, the Daily Mail reports.
Mr Perelman turned down a $1.1 million award for solving the Poincare Conjecture, one of the most difficult mathematical problems ever conceived.
The US Clay Mathematics Institute announced the reclusive Russian man had won the prize money over the internet.
A former researcher at the Steklov Institute of Mathematics in St Petersburg, Mr Perelman has said he is not interested in money or fame.
His neighbour Vera Petrovna said she had been trying to rid her apartment block of cockroaches, but the insects had taken refuge in the mathematician's flat.
"I was once in his flat and I was astounded," she said.
"He only has a table, a stool and a bed with a dirty mattress which was left by previous owners - alcoholics who sold the flat to him."
Mr Perelman surprised the mathematics community when he failed to turn up to receive the highly sought-after Fields Medal at a ceremony in Spain four years ago, saying he did not want to be on display like "an animal in a zoo".
I love stories like these. I think it's awesome that there are people who can completely ignore the desires that most of society stereotypically has and can just be content living life how they want to, like this guy, who is happy living with roaches and doing math problems, his only possessions a table, stool, and dirty mattress.
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03-23-2010, 06:31 AM #2
- Join Date
- Jul 2009
- Location
- Charleston, SC
- Age
- 35
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- 321
2010 Nissan Sentra SR dd- 2001 Pontiac Trans Am WS6
That's pretty crazy. Even if I was that guy, I'd at least take the money to get a new mattress and get rid of the cockroaches.
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03-23-2010, 06:53 AM #3
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03-23-2010, 06:55 AM #4
- Join Date
- Aug 2005
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
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- 42
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- 21,720
My life is a- Ben Stiller movie.
soooooo what was the answer?
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03-23-2010, 07:28 AM #5
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03-23-2010, 07:37 AM #6
Unbelievable...but very interesting.
What does he do in his free time
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03-23-2010, 07:43 AM #7
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03-23-2010, 07:44 AM #8
The Poincaré conjecture says that if a 3-dimensional manifold is compact, has no boundary and is simply connected, then it is homeomorphic to a 3-dimensional sphere.
Key terms:
1D sphere (Circle)
2D sphere (Common Ball):
3-sphere (4D Ball):
Manifold:
A manifold is a surface created by taking another surface and warping it
Further example, torus:
Simply Connected:
A manifold is simply connected if any loop drawn on the space can be deformed to a point without leaving the manifold.
Impossible on a sphere (it would fall off)
Possible on a donut
Perelman (using ideas originally from Hamilton) proved the conjecture by deforming the manifold using something called the Ricci flow (which behaves similarly to the heat equation that describes the diffusion of heat through an object). The Ricci flow usually deforms the manifold towards a rounder shape, except for some cases where it stretches the manifold apart from itself (like hot mozzarella) towards what are known as singularities. Perelman and Hamilton then chop the manifold at the singularities (a process called "surgery") causing the separate pieces to form into ball-like shapes. Major steps in the proof involve showing how manifolds behave when they are deformed by the Ricci flow, examining what sort of singularities develop, determining whether this surgery process can be completed and wondering whether the surgery might need to be repeated infinitely many times.
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03-23-2010, 07:55 AM #9
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03-23-2010, 07:59 AM #10
I'm a pretty hardcore nerd but I am a little lost on the above...
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03-23-2010, 08:03 AM #11
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03-23-2010, 08:04 AM #12
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03-23-2010, 08:05 AM #13
Wolfram explains the problem much better...
"the conjecture says that the three-sphere is the only type of bounded three-dimensional space possible that contains no holes."
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PoincareConjecture.html
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03-23-2010, 08:08 AM #14
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03-23-2010, 08:10 AM #15
Last edited by Tonik; 03-23-2010 at 08:15 AM.
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03-23-2010, 08:11 AM #16
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03-23-2010, 08:17 AM #17
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03-23-2010, 08:19 AM #18
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03-23-2010, 08:20 AM #19
Is it possible to be the dumbest, math genius... ever?
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03-23-2010, 08:23 AM #20
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