Grigori Perelman Biography

Grigori Perelman is a Russian mathematician who is best known for his contributions to Riemannian geometry and geometric topology. He made a breakthrough in solving the soul conjecture and later Thurston's geometrization conjecture, providing proof of the Poincaré conjecture. However, perhaps due to the early negative experiences he had to go through as a Jewish person in the Soviet Union, he became increasingly reclusive during most of his adult life. He even renounced many prestigious awards that he received for his invaluable work in the field of mathematics because he was “not interested in money or fame” and did not “want to be on display like an animal in a zoo”. In 2006, he declined the ‘Fields Medal’ and in 2010, he refused to take the ‘Millennium Prize’, as well as the accompanying one million dollars prize money. For the latter, he believed that he should have shared the honor with Richard S. Hamilton, the mathematician who pioneered a research program in the Ricci flow that eventually led to his work. Throughout his life, he was in “disagreement with the organized mathematical community”, and is now thought to have retired from mathematics.