Why Perelman gave up a million dollars and avoids journalists

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The mathematician Grigory Perelman, the one who refused a million dollars, no less resolutely rejected the proposal of the Russian Academy of Sciences to join its members. Rather, he simply ignored this proposal, without leaving his voluntary retreat …

The seemingly strange behavior of Grigory Yakovlevich, taking on more and more shocking forms, is inspired by his deepest contempt for any kind of publicity. It would be strange if he agreed to jump into academician from a candidate of sciences, and nothing else, except for the interests of PR, this proposal of the Russian Academy of Sciences cannot be explained.

“I know how to run the universe.

And tell me - why should I run after a million?"

But even stranger is the desire of not only TV journalists, whose credo is "scandals, intrigues, investigations", but also of serious scientists to cling to the glory of an eccentric mathematical genius.

He proved Poincaré's conjecture - a puzzle that did not give in to anyone for over 100 years and which, through his efforts, became a theorem. For which a Russian citizen, a resident of St. Petersburg, Grigory Perelman, was awarded one of the promised millions. The Millennium Problem, solved by the Russian mathematical genius, is related to the origin of the universe. Not every mathematician is given to understand the essence of the riddle …

Grisha in his youth - even then he was a genius

Explaining about the Poincaré hypothesis, they begin like this: imagine a two-dimensional sphere - take a rubber disk and stretch it over a ball. So that the circumference of the disc is collected at one point. Likewise, for example, you can tie a sports backpack with a cord. The result will be a sphere: for us - three-dimensional, but from the point of view of mathematics - just two-dimensional.

Then they offer to pull the same disk over a donut. It seems to work out. But the edges of the disc will converge into a circle, which can no longer be pulled into a point - it will cut the donut.

Further begins inaccessible to the imagination of an ordinary person. Because it is necessary to imagine already a three-dimensional sphere - namely, a ball stretched over something that goes into another dimension. So, according to Poincaré's hypothesis, a three-dimensional sphere is the only three-dimensional thing, the surface of which can be pulled into one point by some hypothetical "hypercord".

Jules Henri Poincaré suggested this in 1904. Now Perelman has convinced everyone who understands that the French topologist 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 very same three-dimensional sphere. But if the Universe is the only "figure" that can be pulled into a point, then, probably, it can be stretched from a point. That serves as an indirect confirmation of the Big Bang theory, which states that the Universe originated from the point.

It turns out that Perelman, together with Poincaré, upset the so-called creationists - supporters of the divine principle of the universe. And they poured water on the mill of materialistic physicists.

Alexander Zabrovsky was lucky to talk to the great mathematician - he left Moscow for Israel a few years ago and thought of contacting Grigory Yakovlevich's mother first through the Jewish community of St. Petersburg, helping her. She talked to her son, and after her good description, he agreed to a meeting. This can truly be called an achievement - the journalists did not manage to "catch" the scientist, although they spent days at his entrance.

Psychologists almost officially call him "crazy professor" - that is, a person is so immersed in his thoughts that he puts on different shoes and forgets to comb his hair. But in modern Russia, this is an almost extinct species.

As Zabrovsky told the newspaper, Perelman made the impression of "an absolutely sane, healthy, adequate and normal person": "Realistic, pragmatic and sane, but not devoid of sentimentality and excitement … Everything that was attributed to him in the press, as if he was" not himself " - complete nonsense! He firmly knows what he wants and knows how to achieve the goal."

The film, for the sake of which the mathematician contacted and agreed to help, will not be about himself, but about the cooperation and confrontation of the three main world mathematical schools: Russian, Chinese and American, which are the most advanced along the path of studying and managing the Universe.

The scientist is offended, as he is called in the Russian press

Perelman explained that he does not communicate with journalists, because they are not interested in science, but in personal and domestic issues - starting with the reasons for refusing a million and ending with the question of cutting hair and nails.

Specifically, he does not want to contact the Russian media because of the disrespectful attitude towards him. For example, in the press he is called Grisha, and such familiarity offends.

Grigory Perelman said that since his school years he was used to what is called “brain training”. Recalling how, being a “delegate” from the USSR, he received a gold medal at the Mathematical Olympiad in Budapest, he said: “We tried to solve problems where the ability to think abstractly was a prerequisite.

But after all, in the 2000s, a national idea was finally formed, the essence of which is simple: personal enrichment at any cost. Among the people, it sounds like this: steal while they give, and wallow if you have time. Any behavior that runs counter to this ideology seems strange and insane, but Perelman's incident turned out to be especially alien.

No other reasoning can explain the behavior of academicians, to whom this shaggy man with unkempt hands explained a hundred times: he wants nothing to do with the modern establishment. Never and never. And when he comes up with something like that, then in a scientific blog he will publish, here, steal, like those Chinese who first wanted to appropriate the famous proof.

Man abhor us, yes, but he is the only one, perhaps, and has the moral right to do so. Perelman is completely devoid of civil pathos. But he is the only one who radically opposes modern consumerism and the loss of national identity imposed by wild capitalism.

I do not exclude that Grigory Yakovlevich himself is not aware of his civil mission and does not think about it at all. He just lives in a world parallel to our bestial reality, where the Forbes list is the main criterion of exclusivity.

Perelman is a model of normality, in contrast to the "masters of life" bursting with well-being. It is unlikely that someone in the place of Perelman would not have tempted with honor and wealth, but he will never do this. Someone must demonstrate to society what state it is in and where its conscience is.