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Austin American-Statesman
Sunday, August 27, 2006
For the love of pure thought
EDITORIAL BOARD
In a culture defined by the squalid roar of a tabloid murder case or the next pronouncement of an infantile millionaire athlete pedaling a stationary bicycle, silence is the unmistakable stamp of something true, maybe even heroic.
Last week, the International Mathematics Union awarded its equivalent of the Nobel Prize, the Fields Medal, to Grigory Perelman, a 40-year-old Russian mathematician. The Clay Mathematics Institute in Cambridge, Mass., has indicated that it will offer Perelman $1 million for his work. Experts in the field say Perelman will almost certainly be one of the greatest mathematicians of the 21st century and, perhaps, one of the greatest math minds ever.
Perelman responded by refusing to appear at the Mathematics Union ceremony and sent word that he would not accept the Fields Medal. Through friends, he has made clear that he will not accept the Mathematics Institute endowment in spite of his Spartan circumstances. And to those reporters who might not have known anything about topology, his specialized field, but who understood all too well a hot news story, Perelman had almost nothing to say.
"I do not think anything that I say can be of the slightest public interest," he told an interviewer in his hometown of St. Petersburg. "I know that self-promotion happens a lot, and if people want to do that, good luck to them. But I do not regard it as a positive. It's just plain and simply that I don't care what anybody writes about me at all."
Perelman's wholesale rejection of our modern obsessions, money and fame, is almost as breathtaking as his accomplishment, and, for some, as hard to understand. At least 10 years ago, Perelman began working on a problem posed in 1904 by French mathematician Henri Poincaré. Dozens had made progress, but in 100 years there was no solution.
There are a couple of simple ways to think of the Poincaré Conjecture, the conception of which we don't pretend to understand. One is that three dimensional space can be shaped in only one way so that it does not have any holes. Another is that when three dimensional space is shaped in that one way it can only be a sphere. Get it?
Perelman got it, and in November 2002, rather than calling a press conference or taking out a patent or selling the rights to a multinational corporation, he posted his solution to the Poincaré Conjecture on a mathematics Web site. "If anybody is interested in my way of solving the problem, it's all there — let them go and read about it," he wrote at the time. "This is what I can offer the public."
Mathematics masters have spent more than three years vetting the work. Only when they were reasonably certain that Perelman had succeeded did the Mathematics Union express its intention to honor him. The solution faces another two years of scrutiny before the Clay Institute makes its decision on the $1 million award. But, already, the rather small world of mathematics is celebrating, not the end of a problem but the beginning of a solution to new problems.
"We may not know for another 100 years if this has some practical application," said Dan Knopf, an assistant professor who works in topology at the University of Texas. "But as someone involved in solving problems of pure thought, I am glad to see this work celebrated."
How foreign a notion it is to work without seeing the practical application in front of you — a product developed and sold, money made. American scientists and mathematicians have always been put to work, fighting the Cold War after the Soviets launched the satellite Sputnik and stemming the Japanese takeover of the world economy in the early 1980s. As the Wall Street Journal recently pointed out, we always seem imperiled by our shortage of mathematics teachers and our surfeit of underperforming mathematics students.
How different it might be if our students and teachers looked to Perelman, who tells friends he pursues the elusive truths of mathematics for the sheer love of pure thought. He speaks directly to what makes us human.
Pitted against the world's puerile and vulgar noise, it is a message too seldom heard.
Sunday, August 27, 2006
For the love of pure thought
EDITORIAL BOARD
In a culture defined by the squalid roar of a tabloid murder case or the next pronouncement of an infantile millionaire athlete pedaling a stationary bicycle, silence is the unmistakable stamp of something true, maybe even heroic.
Last week, the International Mathematics Union awarded its equivalent of the Nobel Prize, the Fields Medal, to Grigory Perelman, a 40-year-old Russian mathematician. The Clay Mathematics Institute in Cambridge, Mass., has indicated that it will offer Perelman $1 million for his work. Experts in the field say Perelman will almost certainly be one of the greatest mathematicians of the 21st century and, perhaps, one of the greatest math minds ever.
Perelman responded by refusing to appear at the Mathematics Union ceremony and sent word that he would not accept the Fields Medal. Through friends, he has made clear that he will not accept the Mathematics Institute endowment in spite of his Spartan circumstances. And to those reporters who might not have known anything about topology, his specialized field, but who understood all too well a hot news story, Perelman had almost nothing to say.
"I do not think anything that I say can be of the slightest public interest," he told an interviewer in his hometown of St. Petersburg. "I know that self-promotion happens a lot, and if people want to do that, good luck to them. But I do not regard it as a positive. It's just plain and simply that I don't care what anybody writes about me at all."
Perelman's wholesale rejection of our modern obsessions, money and fame, is almost as breathtaking as his accomplishment, and, for some, as hard to understand. At least 10 years ago, Perelman began working on a problem posed in 1904 by French mathematician Henri Poincaré. Dozens had made progress, but in 100 years there was no solution.
There are a couple of simple ways to think of the Poincaré Conjecture, the conception of which we don't pretend to understand. One is that three dimensional space can be shaped in only one way so that it does not have any holes. Another is that when three dimensional space is shaped in that one way it can only be a sphere. Get it?
Perelman got it, and in November 2002, rather than calling a press conference or taking out a patent or selling the rights to a multinational corporation, he posted his solution to the Poincaré Conjecture on a mathematics Web site. "If anybody is interested in my way of solving the problem, it's all there — let them go and read about it," he wrote at the time. "This is what I can offer the public."
Mathematics masters have spent more than three years vetting the work. Only when they were reasonably certain that Perelman had succeeded did the Mathematics Union express its intention to honor him. The solution faces another two years of scrutiny before the Clay Institute makes its decision on the $1 million award. But, already, the rather small world of mathematics is celebrating, not the end of a problem but the beginning of a solution to new problems.
"We may not know for another 100 years if this has some practical application," said Dan Knopf, an assistant professor who works in topology at the University of Texas. "But as someone involved in solving problems of pure thought, I am glad to see this work celebrated."
How foreign a notion it is to work without seeing the practical application in front of you — a product developed and sold, money made. American scientists and mathematicians have always been put to work, fighting the Cold War after the Soviets launched the satellite Sputnik and stemming the Japanese takeover of the world economy in the early 1980s. As the Wall Street Journal recently pointed out, we always seem imperiled by our shortage of mathematics teachers and our surfeit of underperforming mathematics students.
How different it might be if our students and teachers looked to Perelman, who tells friends he pursues the elusive truths of mathematics for the sheer love of pure thought. He speaks directly to what makes us human.
Pitted against the world's puerile and vulgar noise, it is a message too seldom heard.
