grigori perelman speaking in los angeles

hmmmm... there are a lot of ways to approach this story. Let's start in 1904 when Henri Poincare (who will call P-Care from this point forth) asked (and i quote wikipedia quoting a source i didn't check... ):
"Consider a compact 3-dimensional manifold V without boundary. Is it possible that the fundamental group of V could be trivial, even though V is not homeomorphic to the 3-dimensional sphere?"

Better put (and i quote my same source),
"every loop can be shrunk to a point."

i'm not a mathematician but the fact is that that "puzzle" stayed unsolved for almost a century. almost... starting in November 2002, Russian mathematician Grigori Perelman posted to arXiv his solution to the Pincare conjecture.

when finally confirmed by several teams of mathematicians in 2006, it was the first, and remains the only, of the millenium problems as defined by the clay institute and with a $1million reward. $1million used to be a big deal in 2000.

perelman was awarded the Fields medal -- it is the "your the bomb of maths and numbers" award for those of you who didn't know having never won it or being in the running. but Grigori didn't accept it which was, and remains, a first. and he hasn't gone running for the clay institute prize either asking for the $1million he's due (write the man a check Clay people).

no - GP is doing his own thing.

so i don't particularly want to hear grigori perelman talk about maths that i don't understand (unless he can make me understand it in a 45-70 minute speech which would be truly incredible and in defiance of many laws of logic, nature, and perhaps gravity). i'd like to hear from the man who did something incredible -- applied himself to a task others couldn't master and mastered it. and more importantly, i'd like to hear from the man who didn't need or want the trinkets and medallions that often go with such feats.

perelman is an inspiration to us all in many ways. and i'd love for him to consider this NP event for that fact. he's proved an inspiration to much more than the mathematics community -- if Rage Against the Machine were a humble and polite mathematician, they'd be Grigori Perelman. and they'd be just as profound for it.

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