Math Genius to The Fields Medal: "No, Thanks!"
Russian mathematics genius Grigory Perelman won The Fields Medal (the "Nobel prize of math" as Alfred Nobel failed to include a math category, complete with $1 million award) for solving one of the hardest math problems ever: the [a href="vny!://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poincar%C3%A9_conjecture"]Poincare conjecture[/a].
But the Russian recluse - who still lives with his mother - said thanks, but no thanks, and declined the award!
(//vny!://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42000000/jpg/_42000540_perel_icm_203.jpg)
John Ball, retiring president of the International Mathematical Union, said he had travelled to St Petersburg to meet Perelman in person to try to understand his reasons for declining the award.
Professor Ball said he had spoken to Perelman of personal experiences with the mathematical community during his career that had caused him to remain at a distance.
"However, I am unable to disclose these comments in public," he said, adding: "He has a different psychological make up, which makes him see life differently."
Manuel de Leon, chairman of the ICM said: "The reason Perelman gave me is that he feels isolated from the mathematical community and therefore has no wish to appear as one of its leaders."
[a href="vny!://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5274040.stm"]Linky....[/a]
For gawd sake man.....DO THE MATH !!!!! That's a million big ones.
[FONT face=Times]Now let's see. I just counted steadily from 1 to 30, and it took about 28 seconds. I could have counted a whole lot faster, but I decided that if I had to keep this up for as long as it would take to get to 1 million, I'd better take a few breaths, and not try to go too fast. So, figuring in some breathing space, and maybe a cough or two, let's say we could average 30 seconds to say 30 numbers (hmm.....when we get up to the really big numbers, they might take longer to say . . . like seven thousand seven hundred and seventy seven!) I think this is not going to be a very close estimate. The really big numbers are going to take more than twice as long to say as the single syllable numbers. We had better use an estimate of 2 seconds for each number, on the average.[/FONT]
[FONT face=Times]Oh well, here goes . . . So that means we'll say 1 million numbers: 2 million seconds., and 60 minutes in an hour, and 24 hours in a day (Oops! I guess we don't have time to sleep!) 60 times 60 times 24 = 86,400 numbers per day. Now, to find the time, in days, to say 1 million numbers we'd have to do some more arithmetic. First, there are 60 seconds in a minute, so we divide 2,000,000 seconds by 60; then, since there are 60 minutes in an hour, we divide the number of minutes by 60; then since there are 24 hours in a day we divide by 24 and get approximately 23 days. [/FONT]
[FONT face=Times]That means we'd have to count day and night, without breakfast lunch or dinner, without sleep or television or a phone call or a bathroom break (yikes!) for 23 days![/FONT]
HA!
Good for him :)
He has parted the meat curtains of this feeble reality and peered intently into the Sea of Oblivion. After that, who needs a million bucks??
lol, tenkani.
Tis true, money is the root of all evil, but without roots......well that's as far as I know. I'll have to give more thought to the 'but without roots' part.