New Yorker on Perelman and Poincaré Controversy

b4stard writes "The New Yorker has an interesting article on the recent proof of the Poincaré conjecture and the controversy surrounding it. This is a very nice read, which, among other things, sheds some light on what may have motivated Perelman in refusing to accept the Fields medal." From the article: "The Fields Medal, like the Nobel Prize, grew, in part, out of a desire to elevate science above national animosities. German mathematicians were excluded from the first I.M.U. congress, in 1924, and, though the ban was lifted before the next one, the trauma it caused led, in 1936, to the establishment of the Fields, a prize intended to be 'as purely international and impersonal as possible.'"

Dear editor

[Anonymous Coward]

You have got the wikipedia link wrong. You meant: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman [wikipedia.org]

Michael Anderson Quote

[Anonymous Coward]

The following was a response to the article disseminated through one of Stony Brook's email lists:

The New Yorker article badly distorted my comments and the quote given is very inaccurate and misleading. I've already discussed it with Yau and expressed to him my apologies and disgust at using my name in this respect. I tried to have the quote removed, but was unsuccessful, partly because I was travelling in Europe while all this happened very quickly and I had no time respond.

I spent a good deal of time talking with Sylvia Nasar trying to convince her to avoid discussion of the Tian-Yau fight since it is irrelevant to Perelman, Poincare, etc. But obviously I was not successful. In this particular respect, I feel the New Yorker has done a disservice to mathematicians.

Sincerely, Michael Anderson

Yet

[Stalyn]

The article may be biased but you can always discern some truth.

1. Perelman is unconcerned with fame and praise.
2. Yau is concerned with fame and praise.
3. Perelman did most the finishing work on the Poincaire conjecture.
4. Yau and co. released a paper on Perelman's work with only passing mention of Perelman.
5. Perelman feels scorned and isolated.

Not by Yau

[wwind123]

50% Hamilton
25% Perelman
30% Yau & Co.

Yau himself never said this. It's another renown Chinese mathematician (named Yang, Le) that was quoted by a Chinese jornalist. I guess journalists all over the world are just the same: they keep misquoting people. Hard to imagine a real mathematician would make this kind of stupid mistake. This quote has actually become a well-known joke on the journalists on Chinese web-forums and blogs.

Argumentum Ad Homology!

[Sage Gaspar]

I did just crack open Munkres to check, second edition in 2000, and my Intro to Diff Manifolds book had a new edition in 2005. The old standby Do Carmo is still hovering back in the 80s, though, and if Munkres mentions Poincaré it's only in passing (plus, what, two editions in 25 years?). You're right, of course, just a bit bitter about dropping $385 on texts today, hehe, two of which just reprinted so I have mismatched editions.

The article tells only part of the story.

[adeev]

The article tells only part of the story. I cannot claim I know the whole story. One has to know what is going on in the Chinese academic community to understand why this happened. Hopefully some chinese academics on the board will help to shed more light on this situation. I happened to work with an alum of Peking University who gave me some insights into the world of Chinese politics. I will try to tell my understanding of the full story. Dr. Yau is a very talented and prolific mathematitian. He made major contributions to several fields of Math and Physics. He educated tens of grad students (many of them are professors at top schools) and won almost every prize in Math. He is probably a better mathematician than Grisha Perelman will ever be. From what i hear from my co-worker Dr.Yau has always wanted to be known as top Chinese mathematician or even scientist, the "king". Here a post from a chinese bbs i found though google. ----- Stage 0: Poincare, the prophet, told people that there exists a tunnel which would go from this side of the mountain to the other side of the mountain. Stage 1: Poincare announced that he found a mistake and that the tunnel he found could not go through the mountain but maintained his belief that there still exists such a tunnel yet to be found. This conjectured tunnel was then named "Tunnel of Poincare". Stage 2: Many pioneers went out trying to find such a tunnel but failed. However, some of them (Stallings, Zeeman, Smale, Freedman) did find similar tunnels in other mountains. Stage 3: Perelman, the monk, told people that he had found Tunnel of Poincare in the mountain that Poincare himself failed, and that he laid out 30 trail marks at various places in the tunnel so that other people could go through by themselves. Stage 4: Cao and Zhu were teamed up as an expedition to explore the feasibility of Perelman's tunnel. They were able to go through indeed and they laid out more than 300 trail marks along the tunnel which eases the pass greatly. Stage 5: Yau, the king, announced that the ultimate discovery of Poincare Tunnel was finally made by Cao and Zhu, and emphasized the importance of the "Perelman Method" (called by Cao-Zhu "Hamilton and Perelman's Ricci flow theory"). Stage 6: Celebration. ------ However, the Chinese academic establishment (my friend referred to them as the Peking University camp) considers him as an outsider. Yau has been trying to attack the opposition be claiming that his grad students are better mathematicians than the "corrupt" academics from the PKU camp. He just needed some major result for a PR stunt. Perelman just happened to come up with his proof in the wrong time. After reading the article one might think that Yau tried to get some credit for proving the conjecture. Yau never actually tried to claim that he proved the conjecture. But he did try to steal some of Perelman's fame for his students to show that under his guidance chinese mathematicians can produce world class results. However, what was meant to be a local PR trick spilt arcoss the borders and ended up in New Yorker. The Yau camp is strong too, by the way. The article was posted a couple of days ago and every blog that linked it has anonymous postings with emails supporting Yau, e.g. see a few posts above.