Maths 'Nobel' Rumoured for Russian Recluse

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Maths 'Nobel' Rumoured for Russian Recluse 3.8 News 490-491 MH NEW 1/8/06 9:59 AM Page 490 Vol 442|3 August 2006 NEWS Maths ‘Nobel’ rumoured for Russian recluse Some speculation always precedes the ann- The geometrization conjecture classifies all ouncement of the Fields medals, the most the possible forms that three-dimensional illustrious awards in mathematics. But this surfaces, called three-manifolds, can take. year rumours have an extra dimension: one of The Poincaré conjecture describes the prop- the prizes to be awarded at the International erties of a subset known as ‘simply connected’ Congress of Mathematicians in Madrid on manifolds — in particular, those for which 22 August may be given for the solution of a every loop drawn on the surface can be century-old problem. shrunk to a point. Favourite to win a medal is Russian mathe- To tackle the conjecture, Perelman used a matician Grigory ‘Grisha’ Perelman, for his mathematical tool known as Ricci flow, devel- work on the Poincaré conjecture. Three papers oped by Richard Hamilton of Columbia Uni- now suggest that his proof of the conjecture is versity. Perelman, formerly of the Steklov right. If it stands up to two years of scrutiny, Institute in Moscow, advanced Hamilton’s Perelman will also be eligible for at least a share work by finding a way to deal with certain of a million-dollar mathematics prize (see problems encountered in using Ricci flow to ‘Clay feats’). study the deformation of surfaces. “I am completely convinced “For people studying The advent of a possible that Perelman has proved the proof shook a small contingent Poincaré conjecture,” says John topology, the of mathematicians. “For people Morgan, a topologist at Col- whole landscape studying topology, the whole umbia University in New York has changed.” landscape has changed. It’s like and co-author of the most waking up one morning after recent paper analysing Perelman’s work. an earthquake,” says Bruce Kleiner of Yale The Poincaré conjecture is a seemingly University in New Haven, Connecticut. simple statement about the nature of three- Perelman followed his first article with two is that clever people, experts in the area, read it dimensional surfaces, but it had resisted proof further papers, and in the spring of 2003 he and come to an opinion.” since French mathematician Henri Poincaré toured the United States to lecture about his Three pairs of respected mathematicians put it forward in 1904. work2. He has since retreated from the public have produced written accounts filling in the In 2002, Perelman posted to an online eye, leaving other mathematicians to comb details of Perelman’s work. preprint server a paper1 that claimed to “give a through his papers line by line, filling in details Kleiner and John Lott of the University of sketch of an eclectic proof of this conjecture”. and searching for holes in his logic. Michigan, Ann Arbor, posted their most By this, Perelman meant not just the Poincaré “How do you decide whether anything is recent paper to the arXiv preprint server on PRINCETONIAN C. CHANG/DAILY conjecture, but the geometrization conjecture, correct?” asks John Ball, president of the Inter- 25 May3. “There was a moment when I really a much broader theorem of which Poincaré’s national Mathematical Union and chair of the thought there was a problem with the argu- statement is a special case. Fields medal committee. “All that can happen ment,” says Kleiner. “But that state of mind Bird flu not set for pandemic, says US team Researchers have tried to create a H5N1 virus will require a complex strain could evolve. For instance, and wild birds have died owing to pandemic H5N1 influenza strain — series of genetic changes to evolve strains other than those used in the the H5N1 strain of flu. It has infected and failed. into a pandemic strain. experiments could get together. at least 232 people and killed 134 of Simply mixing genes from an H5N1 “These data do not mean that “They need to look at other viruses, them. Scientists are worried that bird-flu strain with those from an H5N1 cannot convert to become because both human and avian flu H5N1 will learn to pass easily H3N2 human strain did not result in a transmissible from person to continue to evolve,” says Frederick between humans and kill millions strain that was readily transmissible, person,” says Julie Gerberding, Hayden, a flu specialist at the more. In 1957 and 1968, pandemic at least among ferrets. The scientists director of the CDC. “We are not out University of Virginia, strains of flu seem to have emerged who conducted the work, at the of the woods on pandemic Charlottesville, who is currently when bird and human flu viruses Centers for Disease Control and preparedness yet.” working with the World Health exchanged genes, allowing the bird- Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Others agree, pointing out that Organization. flu virus to be easily transmitted Georgia, say it suggests that the there are many ways a pandemic Since 1997, millions of domestic between people. 490 © 2006 Nature Publishing Group 3.8 News 490-491 MH NEW 1/8/06 9:59 AM Page 491 NATURE|Vol 442|3 August 2006 NEWS INDONESIAN FLU CASES GO UNSTUDIED No sequence data have been acquired from birds for nearly a year. www.nature.com/news Clay feats: the million-dollar questions In 2000, the privately funded serve to start the clock on the Clay Mathematics Institute in waiting period,” he says. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Some mathematicians announced a prize of $1 million suggest that the prize money for the solution of each of should be shared between seven mathematical Perelman and Richard conundrums — including the Hamilton, a mathematician at INST. MATHEMATICS CLAY Poincaré conjecture. Columbia University in New “I didn't think that I would York, who laid much of the live to see the Poincaré groundwork. Those who have Great foundations: the Clay conjecture solved,” says followed up the proof could Mathematics Institute. James Carlson, president of also theoretically lay claim to the institute. “But we're there, appear online but have not the money. or almost there.” been formally reviewed. Bruce Kleiner of Yale The rules require that Those who have tried to University says he will not the proof appear in a peer- persuade Perelman to seek a share. “I’m not saying reviewed outlet and then publish say that he shows no that it was easy to fill in the survive two years of scrutiny. interest. Other recent papers details,” he says. “But you Grigory Perelman’s papers on his work by different can’t compare it to the level of containing a possible proof mathematicians may count ingenuity required to sketch of the Poincaré conjecture instead, says Carlson. “These out the proof.” J.H. in Guangzhou, China, was published in June5. achievement in mathematics, it would be It claims to complete the proof of both conjec- funny if they didn’t,” says Morgan. There is also tures, rather than simply fleshing out Perelman’s a precedent. Two previous Fields medals have work. This is justified, argues Shing-Tung Yau, been awarded for proofs of an equivalent of the an editor-in-chief on the journal, because Cao Poincaré conjecture in higher dimensions — and Zhu follow a somewhat different argument to Stephen Smale in 1966 and Michael Freed- to Perelman. man in 1986. The appearance of these three papers has And in 2006? Morgan, along with 4,000 Board meeting: Grigory Perelman presents his fuelled rumours that Perelman will receive a guests, will find out in a few weeks — when proof of the intractable Poincaré conjecture. Fields prize. Up to four medals are awarded the medals are announced at the opening every four years to mathematicians no older ceremony of the congress in Madrid. ■ persisted for only a week or two before the than 40, making Perelman just eligible for this Jenny Hogan issue was resolved.” year’s crop. Not that he will attend the Madrid 4 1. Perelman, G. Preprint at http://arxiv.org/abs/math.DG/ A 473-page paper by Morgan and Gang meeting: the organizing committee received 0211159 (2002). Tian of the Massachusetts Institute of Technol- no reply when they invited him to give a 2. Singer, E. Nature 427, 388–389 (2004). ogy appeared on 25 July. plenary lecture. 3. Kleiner, B. & Lott, J. Preprint at http://arxiv.org/abs/ math.DG/0605667 (2006). The third paper, from Huai-Dong Cao of Even so, many mathematicians think Perel- 4. Morgan, J. W. & Tian, G. Preprint at http://arxiv.org/abs/ Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, man will be honoured with a medal. “I hope math.DG/0607607 (2006). and Xi-Ping Zhu of Zhongshan University that they give him one. This is such a major 5. Cao, H.-D. & Zhu, X.-P. Asian J. Math. 10, 165–492 (2006). To test whether H5N1 might virus. In addition, the ferrets did other animals, the scientists human disease, say scientists not do this, the CDC scientists used a not pass the hybrid virus easily to say. They hope to repeat the involved in the experiments. Nor technique called reverse genetics others. And even if they did pass on experiments to test the pandemic does the study address whether to snip genes out of H3N2 and H5N1 the virus, the other ferrets did not potential of other viruses — H5N1 could evolve into a pandemic viruses and recombine them into become fatally ill. including those taken from patients strain by accumulating mutations if hybrid bird–human viruses. They “They need to look at after 1997, the year that the H5N1 it passed through many people.
Recommended publications
  • Mathematics Opportunities
    Mathematics Opportunities will be published by the American Mathematical Society, NSF Integrative Graduate by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, or jointly by the American Statistical Association and the Education and Research Institute of Mathematical Statistics. Training Support is provided for about thirty participants at each conference, and the conference organizer invites The Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training both established researchers and interested newcomers, (IGERT) program was initiated by the National Science including postdoctoral fellows and graduate students, to Foundation (NSF) to meet the challenges of educating Ph.D. attend. scientists and engineers with the interdisciplinary back- The proposal due date is April 8, 2005. For further grounds and the technical, professional, and personal information on submitting a proposal, consult the CBMS skills needed for the career demands of the future. The website, http://www.cbms.org, or contact: Conference program is intended to catalyze a cultural change in grad- Board of the Mathematical Sciences, 1529 Eighteenth Street, uate education for students, faculty, and universities by NW, Washington, DC 20036; telephone: 202-293-1170; establishing innovative models for graduate education in fax: 202-293-3412; email: [email protected] a fertile environment for collaborative research that tran- or [email protected]. scends traditional disciplinary boundaries. It is also intended to facilitate greater diversity in student participation and —From a CBMS announcement to contribute to the development of a diverse, globally aware science and engineering workforce. Supported pro- jects must be based on a multidisciplinary research theme National Academies Research and administered by a diverse group of investigators from U.S.
    [Show full text]
  • AROUND PERELMAN's PROOF of the POINCARÉ CONJECTURE S. Finashin After 3 Years of Thorough Inspection, Perelman's Proof of Th
    AROUND PERELMAN'S PROOF OF THE POINCARE¶ CONJECTURE S. Finashin Abstract. Certain life principles of Perelman may look unusual, as it often happens with outstanding people. But his rejection of the Fields medal seems natural in the context of various activities followed his breakthrough in mathematics. Cet animal est tr`esm¶echant, quand on l'attaque, il se d¶efend. Folklore After 3 years of thorough inspection, Perelman's proof of the Poincar¶eConjecture was ¯nally recognized by the consensus of experts. Three groups of researchers not only veri¯ed its details, but also published their own expositions, clarifying the proofs in several hundreds of pages, on the level \available to graduate students". The solution of the Poincar¶eConjecture was the central event discussed in the International Congress of Mathematicians in Madrid, in August 2006 (ICM-2006), which gave to it a flavor of a historical congress. Additional attention to the personality of Perelman was attracted by his rejec- tion of the Fields medal. Some other of his decisions are also non-conventional and tradition-breaking, for example Perelman's refusal to submit his works to journals. Many people ¯nd these decisions strange, but I ¯nd them logical and would rather criticize certain bad traditions in the modern organization of science. One such tradition is a kind of tolerance to unfair credit for mathematical results. Another big problem is the journals, which are often transforming into certain clubs closed for aliens, or into pro¯table businesses, enjoying the free work of many mathemati- cians. Sometimes the role of the \organizers of science" in mathematics also raises questions.
    [Show full text]
  • The Differences of Ricci Flow Between Perelman and Hamilton About the Poincaré Conjecture and the Geometrization Conjecture Of
    Journal of Modern Education Review, ISSN 2155-7993, USA September 2017, Volume 7, No. 9, pp. 662–670 Doi: 10.15341/jmer(2155-7993)/09.07.2017/007 © Academic Star Publishing Company, 2017 http://www.academicstar.us The Differences of Ricci Flow between Perelman and Hamilton about the Poincaré Conjecture and the Geometrization Conjecture of Thurston for Mathematics Lectures Karasawa Toshimitsu (YPM Mara Education Foundation/Univertiti Kuala Lumpur, Japan) Abstract: In this paper, it will be given the ideas of the proof the Poincaré conjecture and the geometrization conjecture of Thurston by Perelman who is a Russian mathematician posted the first of a series of three e-prints. Perelman’s proof uses a modified version of a Ricci flow program developed by Richard Streit Hamilton. Someone said that the major contributors of this work are Hamilton and Perelman. Actually Ricci flow was pioneered by Hamilton. But the version of surgery needed for Perelman’s argument which is extremely delicate as one need to ensure that all the properties of Ricci flow used in the argument also hold for Ricci flow with surgery. Running the surgery in reverse, this establishes the full geometry conjecture of Thurston, and in particular the Poincaré conjecture as a special and simpler case. This is the excellent thing for the mathematics lecturer to find in his/her mathematics education. Keywords: Ricci Flow, Poincaré conjecture, Geometrization conjecture, Perelman, Hamilton 1. Introduction The Poincaré conjecture was one of the most important open questions in topology before being proved. In 2000, it was named one of the seven Millennium Prize Problems which were conceived to record some of the most difficult problems with which mathematicians were grappling at the turn of the second millennium.
    [Show full text]
  • Annual Report 1996–1997
    Department of Mathematics Cornell University Annual Report 1996Ð97 Year in Review: Mathematics Instruction and Research Dedication Wolfgang H. J. Fuchs This annual report is dedicated to the memory of Wolfgang H. J. Fuchs, professor emeritus of mathematics at Cornell University, who died February 24, 1997, at his home. Born on May 19, 1915, in Munich, Germany, Wolfgang moved to England in 1933 and enrolled at Cambridge University, where he received his B.A. in 1936 and his Ph.D. in 1941. He held various teaching positions in Great Britain between 1938 and 1950. During the 1948Ð49 academic year, he held a visiting position in the Mathematics Department at Cornell University. He returned to the Ithaca community in 1950 as a permanent member of the department, where he continued to work vigorously even after his ofÞcial retirement in 1985. He was chairman of the Mathematics Department from 1969 to 1973. His academic honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright-Hays Research Fellowship, and a Humboldt Senior Scientist award. Wolfgang was a renowned mathematician who specialized in the classical theory of functions of one complex variable, especially Nevanlinna theory and approximation theory. His fundamental discoveries in Nevanlinna theory, many of them the product of an extended collaboration with Albert Edrei, reshaped the theory and have profoundly inßuenced two generations of mathematicians. His colleagues will remember him both for his mathematical achievements and for his remarkable good humor and generosity of spirit. He is survived by his wife, Dorothee Fuchs, his children Ñ Annie (Harley) Campbell, John Fuchs and Claudia (Lewis McClellen) Fuchs Ñ and by his grandchildren: Storn and Cody Cook, and Lorenzo and Natalia Fuchs McClellen.
    [Show full text]
  • LETTERS to the EDITOR Responses to ”A Word From… Abigail Thompson”
    LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Responses to ”A Word from… Abigail Thompson” Thank you to all those who have written letters to the editor about “A Word from… Abigail Thompson” in the Decem- ber 2019 Notices. I appreciate your sharing your thoughts on this important topic with the community. This section contains letters received through December 31, 2019, posted in the order in which they were received. We are no longer updating this page with letters in response to “A Word from… Abigail Thompson.” —Erica Flapan, Editor in Chief Re: Letter by Abigail Thompson Sincerely, Dear Editor, Blake Winter I am writing regarding the article in Vol. 66, No. 11, of Assistant Professor of Mathematics, Medaille College the Notices of the AMS, written by Abigail Thompson. As a mathematics professor, I am very concerned about en- (Received November 20, 2019) suring that the intellectual community of mathematicians Letter to the Editor is focused on rigor and rational thought. I believe that discrimination is antithetical to this ideal: to paraphrase I am writing in support of Abigail Thompson’s opinion the Greek geometer, there is no royal road to mathematics, piece (AMS Notices, 66(2019), 1778–1779). We should all because before matters of pure reason, we are all on an be grateful to her for such a thoughtful argument against equal footing. In my own pursuit of this goal, I work to mandatory “Diversity Statements” for job applicants. As mentor mathematics students from diverse and disadvan- she so eloquently stated, “The idea of using a political test taged backgrounds, including volunteering to help tutor as a screen for job applicants should send a shiver down students at other institutions.
    [Show full text]
  • Prize Is Awarded to the Author of an Outstanding Expository Article on a Mathematical Topic
    BALTIMORE • JAN 16–19, 2019 January 2019 BALTIMORE • JAN 16–19, 2019 Prizes and Awards 4:25 P.M., Thursday, January 17, 2019 64 PAGES | SPINE: 1/8" PROGRAM OPENING REMARKS Kenneth A. Ribet, American Mathematical Society CHAUVENET PRIZE Mathematical Association of America EULER BOOK PRIZE Mathematical Association of America THE DEBORAH AND FRANKLIN TEPPER HAIMO AWARDS FOR DISTINGUISHED COLLEGE OR UNIVERSITY TEACHING OF MATHEMATICS Mathematical Association of America YUEH-GIN GUNG AND DR.CHARLES Y. HU AWARD FOR DISTINGUISHED SERVICE TO MATHEMATICS Mathematical Association of America LOUISE HAY AWARD FOR CONTRIBUTION TO MATHEMATICS EDUCATION Association for Women in Mathematics M. GWENETH HUMPHREYS AWARD FOR MENTORSHIP OF UNDERGRADUATE WOMEN IN MATHEMATICS Association for Women in Mathematics JOAN &JOSEPH BIRMAN PRIZE IN TOPOLOGY AND GEOMETRY Association for Women in Mathematics FRANK AND BRENNIE MORGAN PRIZE FOR OUTSTANDING RESEARCH IN MATHEMATICS BY AN UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT American Mathematical Society Mathematical Association of America Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics COMMUNICATIONS AWARD Joint Policy Board for Mathematics NORBERT WIENER PRIZE IN APPLIED MATHEMATICS American Mathematical Society Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics LEVI L. CONANT PRIZE American Mathematical Society E. H. MOORE RESEARCH ARTICLE PRIZE American Mathematical Society MARY P. D OLCIANI PRIZE FOR EXCELLENCE IN RESEARCH American Mathematical Society DAVID P. R OBBINS PRIZE American Mathematical Society OSWALD VEBLEN PRIZE IN GEOMETRY
    [Show full text]
  • Print This Article
    Vanishing act has math pros re-solving riddle http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/08/20/MN... Return to regular view Print This Article Vanishing act has math pros re-solving riddle - Dennis Overbye, New York Times Sunday, August 20, 2006 Grisha Perelman, where are you? Three years ago, a Russian mathematician by the name of Grigory Perelman, a.k.a. Grisha, in St. Petersburg, announced that he had solved a famous and intractable mathematical problem, known as the Poincare conjecture, about the nature of space. After posting a few short papers on the Internet and making a whirlwind lecture tour of the United States, Perelman disappeared back into the Russian woods in the spring of 2003, leaving the world's mathematicians to pick up the pieces and decide if he was right. Now they say they have finished his work, and the evidence is circulating among scholars in the form of three book-length papers with about 1,000 pages of dense mathematics and prose among them. As a result there is a growing feeling, a cautious optimism that they have finally achieved a landmark not just of mathematics, but of human thought. "It's really a great moment in mathematics," said Bruce Kleiner of Yale, who has spent the past three years helping to explicate Perelman's work. "It could have happened 100 years from now, or never." In a speech at a conference in Beijing this summer, Shing-Tung Yau of Harvard said the understanding of three-dimensional space brought about by Poincare's conjecture could be one of the major pillars of math in the 21st century.
    [Show full text]
  • View This Volume's Front and Back Matter
    http://dx.doi.org/10.1090/gsm/077 Hamilton's Ricci Flow This page intentionally left blank Hamilton' s Ricc i Flo w Bennett Chow Peng Lu Lei Ni Graduate Studies in Mathematics Volum e 11 j^^ MtSJff l America n Mathematica l Societ y Wm^jz Scienc e Pres s Editorial Board David Cox Walter Craig Nikolai Ivanov Steven G. Krantz David Saltman (Chair) This edition is published by the American Mathematical Society under license from Science Press. 2000 Mathematics Subject Classification. Primary 53C44, 53C21, 58J35, 35K55. For additional information and updates on this book, visit www.ams.org/bookpages/gsm-77 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Chow, Bennett. Hamilton's Ricci flow / Bennett Chow, Peng Lu, and Lei Ni. p. cm. — (Graduate studies in mathematics, ISSN 1065-7339 ; v. 77) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8218-4231-7 (alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8218-4231-5 (alk. paper) 1. Global differential geometry. 2. Ricci flow. 3. Riemannian manifolds. I. Lu, Peng, 1964- II. Ni, Lei, 1969- III. Title. QA670.C455 2006 516.3/62—dc22 2006043027 Copying and reprinting. Individual readers of this publication, and nonprofit libraries acting for them, are permitted to make fair use of the material, such as to copy a chapter for use in teaching or research. Permission is granted to quote brief passages from this publication in reviews, provided the customary acknowledgment of the source is given. Republication, systematic copying, or multiple reproduction of any material in this publication is permitted only under license from the American Mathematical Society.
    [Show full text]
  • The Poincaré Conjecture
    Smalltalk: The Poincar´eConjecture Brian Heinold Mount St. Mary's University April 11, 2017 1 / 59 Let's examine each term so we can understand the whole statement. The Poincar´eConjecture Statement of the problem, as given on Wikipedia: Every simply connected, closed 3-manifold is homeomorphic to the 3-sphere. 2 / 59 The Poincar´eConjecture Statement of the problem, as given on Wikipedia: Every simply connected, closed 3-manifold is homeomorphic to the 3-sphere. Let's examine each term so we can understand the whole statement. 3 / 59 Simply Connected Every simply connected, closed 3-manifold is homeomorphic to the 3-sphere. 4 / 59 Simply Connected Roughly speaking, a 2D region is simply connected if it has no holes, like below. 5 / 59 Imagine hitting the circles with a shrink ray. Will they be able to get as small as we like, or will the region get in the way? Simply Connected More formally, a region is simply connected if every closed curve can be shrunk to a point without leaving the region. 6 / 59 Simply Connected More formally, a region is simply connected if every closed curve can be shrunk to a point without leaving the region. Imagine hitting the circles with a shrink ray. Will they be able to get as small as we like, or will the region get in the way? 7 / 59 Simply Connected This applies in higher dimensions as well. For 3D shapes, there can be holes, but they can't \go all the way through" the object. The same curve definition applies here as well.
    [Show full text]
  • Perelman, the Ricci Flow and the Poincaré Conjecture
    Perelman, the Ricci Flow and the Poincare´ Conjecture Perelman, the Ricci Flow and the Poincare´ Conjecture CARLO MANTEGAZZA Pisa 10 September 2016 Perelman, the Ricci Flow and the Poincare´ Conjecture The Poincare´ Conjecture The Poincare´ Conjecture Geometric Flows The Ricci Flow – Richard Hamilton The Program to Prove Poincare´ Conjecture The Difficulties The Work of Grisha Perelman The Proof of Poincare´ Conjecture Other Developments Perelman, the Ricci Flow and the Poincare´ Conjecture The Poincare´ Conjecture Poincare´ and the Birth of Topology Even if several results that to- day we call “topological” were already previously known, it is with Poincare` (1854–1912), the last universalist, that topology (Analysis Situs) gets its modern form. In particular, regarding the prop- erties of surfaces or higher di- mensional spaces. Poincare´ introduced the funda- mental concept of simple con- nectedness. Perelman, the Ricci Flow and the Poincare´ Conjecture The Poincare´ Conjecture Surfaces – Examples Closed surfaces (compact, without boundary, orientable): Perelman, the Ricci Flow and the Poincare´ Conjecture The Poincare´ Conjecture Surfaces – Examples Closed surfaces (compact, without boundary, orientable): Perelman, the Ricci Flow and the Poincare´ Conjecture The Poincare´ Conjecture Surfaces – Examples Closed surfaces (compact, without boundary, orientable): Perelman, the Ricci Flow and the Poincare´ Conjecture The Poincare´ Conjecture Surfaces – Examples Closed surfaces (compact, without boundary, orientable): Perelman, the Ricci Flow
    [Show full text]
  • Seed: Not Feeling the Fields file:///Users/Joshuaroebke/Desktop/My Articles/Fields.Html
    Seed: Not Feeling the Fields file:///Users/joshuaroebke/Desktop/My Articles/Fields.html PHYSICS & MATH Not Feeling the Fields Grisha Perelman becomes the first person ever to turn down math's top prize. by JOSHUA ROEBKE • Posted August 25, 2006 12:41 AM Grigory Perelman lives with his mother in an undistinguished apartment in St. Petersburg, Russia. On Tuesday, August 22, rather than being honored at a palace in Madrid, where he would receive a gold medallion from King Juan Carlos of Spain, he was probably in his flat, enjoying a late lunch of borscht or writing equations in solitude. Perelman is the first person in history to turn down the Fields Medal, mathematics' biggest prize. It's an honor he won the right to refuse by audaciously solving the hundred-year-old Poincaré conjecture. The week-long International Congress of Mathematicians has attracted nearly 5,000 Grisha Perelman Courtesy International Congress of Mathematicians Press mathematicians from 100 countries to the Spanish capital. Like the Olympics, the very Office best travel to the host city from all corners of the globe every four years, where they put their hard work and talents on display and see who takes home the gold medals. "There are always lots of rumors swirling around before the Congress," said Columbia University mathematician John Morgan. "And basically everybody is there to see the Fields." This year's Congress is not unlike a major sporting event--there's the pre-event buzz, not to mention the tender age of most of the competitors. Like athletics, math is a game for the young.
    [Show full text]
  • 2009 Conant Prize
    2009 Conant Prize John W. Morgan received the 2009 AMS Levi L. undergoing scrutiny by experts. It made the Conant Prize at the 115th Annual Meeting of the momentous developments surrounding the con- AMS in Washington, DC, in January 2009. jectures of Poincaré and Thurston accessible to a wide mathematical audience. The article captured Citation key concepts and results from topology and dif- The Levi L. Conant Prize for 2009 is awarded to ferential geometry and conveyed to the reader the John Morgan for his article, “Recent progress on significance of the advances. the Poincaré Conjecture and the classification of Morgan’s exposition is elegant and mathemati- 3-manifolds”, Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 42 (2005), cally precise. The paper transmits a great amount 57–78. of information in a seemingly effortless flow of The celebrated Poincaré Con- mathematical ideas from across a broad spectrum jecture, formulated in modern of topics. It was a valuable survey when it appeared terms, asks, “Is a closed 3-mani- and remains so today. fold having trivial fundamen- tal group diffeomorphic to the Biographical Sketch 3-dimensional sphere?” This Morgan received his Ph.D. in mathematics from conjecture evolved from Poin- Rice University in 1969. From 1969 to 1972 he caré’s 1904 paper and inspired was an instructor at Princeton University, and an enormous amount of work from 1972 to 1974 an assistant professor at the in 3-dimensional topology in Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 1974 the ensuing century. Thurston’s to 1976 he was member of Institut des Hautes Geometrization Conjecture sub- Etudes Scientifiques in Paris.
    [Show full text]