Grigori Perelman – mathematician who refused to accept $1.000.000 prize

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

by SpaceInvader • 4 years ago

16 2 4 years ago

en.wikipedia.org

This seems like a good case study in effectively disappearing from your previous position of notoriety and leaving little else but conjecture and rumor behind. And a big question: Why? What does he know that we don't?

This is an area of interest to me because we can define the annoyances in his life (ethics breaches, loss of ideals to some extent, issues with notoriety, etc) as growth or learning opportunities that he declined to engage with directly at length, returning to and building on known strengths instead.

But at the same time, leaving those opportunities behind typically leaves a person reeling, in the sense that at some level they now perceive that their powers to help or even save the world are more limited than they could previously imagine.

This would be a very simple setup for finding oneself in a state of vague and frustrating exhaustion, and seeking to close off from the world a bit. I hope we get to hear about more of his mathematical works & discoveries in the future.

teruakohatu• 4 years ago

'... I'm not even that successful; that is why I don't want to have everybody looking at me.'

I wonder what real success looks like to him.

Grigori Perelman – mathematician who refused to accept $1.000.000 prize

Related Stories