The Quaternion
The Quaternion Volume 22: Number 1; Fall, 2007 The Newsletter of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics Just a Thought about Poincaré The R. Kent Nagle Lecture Series by Boris Shekhtman The Navier-Stokes (ordinary differential) equations are Andrei Okounkov, Grigori Perelman, Terence Tao, extensions of Newton’s laws of motion to flows of Wendelin Werner. Which of these names sounds liquids or gases. Developed by Claude-Louis Navier familiar? If you circled Perelman you are not alone. I do and George Gabriel Stokes (among others) during the not remember when so many people from different Nineteenth century, these equations are critical in walks of life asked me about a mathematician: modeling weather, air flow around planes and rockets, “Do you know the dude? What’s he done?” motions of stars in a galaxy, and many other physical “Not personally but he solved the Poincaré phenomena. Conjecture.” These equations are very difficult to solve, and the “What’s that?” Clay Institute has offered $ 1,000,000 for a tractable “He proved that a 3-dimensional, simply-connected solution as one of the seven “millennial problems” in manifold is homeomorphic to a sphere” modern mathematics. Then after a pause, “Yeah, whatever, dude. What do Fang-Hua Lin , Silver Professor of Mathematics at you think? Is he nuts?” the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at NYU So who is Perelman and why is he crazy? and recipient of a Sloan fellowship, a Presidential Young Grigori “Grisha” Perelman, WJM, 40, Investigator Award, the Bochner Prize, and the Chern mathematician, lives as a recluse in St.
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