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>He enjoys thinking about math. He doesn't need $1M to think about math. Ergo, he doesn't need $1M.

The fallacy there is the assumption that he will never need $1M to think about math. He could get hit by a bus next week and need $1M for medical care.

(A quick Wikipedia check says that Russia has public health care supplemented with private providers. Suppose here that his injuries were bad enough that the public system wouldn't completely heal him.)

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If he needed help, he could reasonable expect others to come to his aid. Seems characteristic of the profession. Especially for someone of his stature. People would hear of his situation and come forward with offers of aid and hospitality. "Yes, please come to IAS, here's a room, stay as long as you want." Now, he might not want to accept such offers, I don't know. He seems to dislike the academy. In which case he might prefer to suffer alone, than dirty himself w/ prizes and associations.

But the idea that he wouldn't have other resources to draw on, short of the $1M prize, seems wrong.

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