UCLA math star Terence Tao wins $3-million prize

Alas, but then there is also that most distinguished honor in mathematics: The Grigori Perleman Award.

"...On 18 March 2010, it was announced that he had met the criteria to the first Clay Millennium Prize for resolution of the Poincaré conjecture. On 1 July 2010, he turned down the prize of one million dollars. He additionally turned down the prestigious prize of the European Mathematical Society.

"I'm not interested in money or fame; I don't want to be on display like an animal in a zoo."

--Grigori Perleman

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman

See Also:

The Puzzling Case of Grigori Perelman

“As long as I was not conspicuous, I had a choice. Either to make some ugly thing or, if I didn’t do this kind of thing, to be treated as a pet. Now when I become a very conspicuous person, I cannot stay a pet and say nothing. That is why I had to quit.”

http://nautil.us/blog/purest-of-the-purists-the-puzzling-cas...

>>> The other four winners of the new math prize are Simon Donaldson of Stony Brook University in New York and Imperial College London, Maxim Kontsevich of the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques in France, Jacob Lurie of Harvard, and Richard Taylor of the Institute for Advanced Study in New Jersey.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Tao

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Donaldson

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxim_Kontsevich

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Lurie

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Taylor_(mathematician)