Russian Math Genius Rejects $1 million Dollar Prize | Hacker News Reader

Russian Math Genius Rejects $1 million Dollar Prize

washingtonpost.com

32 pointssscheper12 comments

"When he solved the Poincaré conjecture, he ignored the peer-review process and simply posted his three-part solution online." That is far more interesting I think than the fact that he rejected the prize, given that he rejected awards before.

> Perhaps the smartest man in the world.

For fuck's sake, can we stop it with this bullshit. Yes, Perelman is a mathematical genius. He is undoubtedly a talented and extremely intelligent individual, but the statement above adds unnecessary sensationalism.

I think it was meant to be tongue-in-cheek.

Are we going to read this story once a month?

That's not the question. The question is for how long we're going to read it once a month.

Better him than Tiger Woods.

Yes, yes, yes. I'd rather read one million stories about a math mathematician rejecting a prize for solving an incredible puzzle, than a single story about Tiger Woods' life

Isn't it ironic that his attempts to avoid fame brings him more media attention?

That's why Richard Feynman accepted the Nobel prize. From his autobiography, Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman:

I therefore had no idea why someone would be calling me at 3:30 or 4:00 in the morning.

"Professor Feynman?"

"Hey! Why are you bothering me at this time in the morning?"

"I thought you'd like to know that you've won the Nobel Prize."

"Yeah, but I'm sleeping! It would have been better if you had called me in the morning." and I hung up.

My wife said, "Who was that?"

"They told me I won the Nobel Prize."

"Oh, Richard, who was it?" I often kid around and she is so smart that she never gets fooled, but this time I caught her.

The phone rings again: "Professor Feynman, have you heard. . ."

(In a disappointed voice) "Yeah."

Then I began to think, "How can I turn this all off? I don't want any of this!" So the first thing was to take the telephone off the hook, because calls were coming one right after the other. I tried to go back to sleep, but found it was impossible.

I went down to the study to think: What am I going to do? Maybe I won't accept the Prize. What would happen then? Maybe that's impossible.

I put the receiver back on the hook and the phone rang right away. It was a guy from Time magazine. I said to him, "Listen, I've got a problem, so I want this off the record. I don't know how to get out of this thing. Is there some way not to accept the Prize?"

He said, "I'm afraid, sir, that there isn't any way you can do it without making more of a fuss than if you leave it alone." It was obvious. We had quite a conversation, about fifteen or twenty minutes, and the Time guy never published anything about it.

You should see the hassle he went through to get out of being in the National Academy of Sciences. Feynman thought the academy was sort of ridiculous, with physicists wanting to limit the number of chemists and arguing about whether to let in the sociologists. There was a series of back-and-forth letters that were published in a book of collected letters, "Perfectly Reasonable Deviations".

He talks about both the nobel prize and the national academy of sciences in this short video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j9TmDi0vNY

Yea, had he simply quietly taken the money, put it in a bank account and gone back to work, he'd probably barely get a mention in the press.

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