Fergie's Tech Blog

Reclusive Russian Refuses to Accept Math Prize

An AP newswire article by Daniel Woolls, via CBS News, reports that:

A reclusive Russian won an academic prize Tuesday for work toward solving one of history's toughest math problems, but he refused to accept the award _ a stunning renunciation of accolades from the top minds in his field.

Grigory Perelman, a 40-year-old native of St. Petersburg, was praised for work in the field known as topology, which studies shapes, and for a breakthrough that might help scientists figure out nothing less than the shape of the universe.

But besides shunning the medal, academic colleagues say he also seems uninterested in a separate, $1 million prize he might be awarded for his feat, which proved a theorem about the nature of multidimensional space that has stumped people for 100 years.

The Fields Medal was announced at the International Congress of Mathematicians, an event held every four years, this time in Madrid.

posted by Fergie @ 8/22/2006 10:54:00 AM