New Yorker on Perelman and Poincaré Controversy 182
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.'"
Re:Some people don't want to be famous (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Some people don't want to be famous (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not saying he did the wrong thing, or did it cynically, or didn't do it out of love for the work. I'm just saying each year's award winners tend to be a nine-days wonder or less, while this story makes the wonder last longer... probably worth 500 slashdot comments instead of merely 50 :).
If you ask me, Salinger is more famous for being a recluse... hiding in plain sight probably works better.
Perelman is like Linus! (Score:1, Interesting)
What an impressive joy to read about the man. He helps build my faith in humanity.
Re:perhaps he has the best reward there is (Score:2, Interesting)
Thank you, ScrewMaster, your point is extremely valid.
Re:Some people don't want to be famous (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe fame of a different sort. He's saying that by accepting the prize and staying in the community, he'd either have to stick up for what he views as his integrity and contribution by calling Yau out on his later proof, or he'd essentially be confirming it through inaction. He did not want to be embroiled in this kind of political mockery of mathematics, so he decided to remove himself from it. In doing so I guess he has called attention to his reasons, but he's removed from the conflict.
Honestly, this guy is not a glory hog, from all accounts I've heard. If you read the article, the New Yorker spent a week leaving him messages only to find out in the end he hadn't left to check his mail in that week. He's not holding press conferences, there aren't any photo ops, he's not going out of his way to get coverage. If he wanted the press he'd have gone to all the publications calling Yau out as a fraud and stirring up a big ruckus. That's the more interesting story.
Biased and Distorted Article (Score:5, Interesting)
http://mitbbs.com/mitbbs_article_t.php?board=Mathe matics&gid=10840706&ftype=0 [mitbbs.com]
I'll paste just the English version here so everybody can have a look:
====
From Dan Stroock at MIT:
Clarification
I, like several others whom Sylvia Nasar interviewed, am shocked and angered by the article which she and Gruber wrote for the New Yorker. Havingseen Yau in action during his June conference on string theory, Nasar ledme to believe that she was fascinated by S-T Yau and asked me my opinionabout his activities. I told her that I greatly admire Yau's efforts tosupport young Chinese mathematicians and to break down the ossifiedpower structure in the Chinese academic establishment. I then told her that I sometimes have doubts about his methodology. In particular, I toldher that, at least to my ears, Yau weakens his case and lays himself opento his enemies by sounding too self-promoting. As it appears in her article, she has purposefully distorted my statementand made it unforgivably misleading. Like the rest of us, Yau has hisfaults, but, unlike most of us, his virtues outweigh his faults.Unfortunately, Nasar used my statement to bolster her casethat the opposite is true, and for this I cannot forgive her.
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From Michael Anderson at Stony Brook:
Dear Yau,
I am furious, and completely shocked, at what Sylvia Nasar wrote. Her quote of me is completely wrong and baseless. There are other factual mistakes in the article, in addition to those you pointed out. I have left her phone and email messages this evening and hope to speakto her tomorrow at the latest to clear this up. I want her to remove this statement completely from the article. It serves no purpose and contains no factual information; I view it as stupid gossip unworthy of a paper like the New Yorker. At the moment, the print version has not appeared and so it might be possible to fix this still. I spent several hours with S. Nasar on the phone talking about Perelman, Poincare , etc but it seems I was too naive and I'm now disgusted in believing this journalist would report factually. I regret very much this quote falsely attributed to me and will do whatever I can to have it removed. I will keep you informed as I know more.
Yours, Michael
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More clarification from Anderson:
Many of you have probably seen the New Yorker article by Sylvia Nasar and David Gruber on Perelman and the Poincare conjecture. In many respects, its very interesting and a pleasure to read. However,it contains a number of inaccuracies and downright errors. I spent several hours talking with Sylvia Nasar trying to dissuade her from incorporating the Tian-Yau fights into the article, since it was completely irrelevant and I didn't see the point of dragging readers through the mud . Obviously I was not successful. The quote attributed to me on Yau is completely inaccurate and distortedfrom some remarks I made to her in a quite different context; I made itexplicit to her that the remarks I was making in that context were purely speculative and had no basis in fact. I did not give her my permission to quote me on this, even with the qualification of speculation. There are other inaccuracies about Stony Brook. One for instance is theimplication that Tian at MIT was the first to invite Perelman to the USto give talks . This is of course false - we at Stony Brook were the first to do so. I stressed in my talks with her the role Stony Brook played,yet she focusses on the single talk Grisha gave at Princeton, listing a collection of eminent mathematicians, none of whom is a geometer/topologist. I was not given an opportun
Re:Some people don't want to be famous (Score:5, Interesting)
50% Hamilton
25% Perelman
30% Yau & Co.
=
105%
Yes, Yau actually said that.
'As for Yau, Perelman said, "I can't say I'm outraged. Other people do worse. Of course, there are many mathematicians who are more or less honest. But almost all of them are conformists. They are more or less honest, but they tolerate those who are not honest."'
Perelman doesn't really want anything to do with the mathematical community as a result of Yau's politiking.
TFA does not paint a very pretty picture of Yau.
Funny, but you haven't studdied topology (Score:3, Interesting)
The article expresses what many of us want to (Score:5, Interesting)
He remains brilliant and is adept at his new focus, which makes him dangerous. The Fields Medal and Harvard platform give him a lot of power to retaliate against people he perceives as enemies to his legacy. And he has a chip on his shoulder...ok he's always had a chip on his shoulder but in the old days he'd satisfy it by the maths, not by this sort of dirty pool.
I for one would never speak up against him with my name signed to it. I don't blame (or envy) Mike or Dan for the damage control they're faced with now that what they thought were private remarks have been made public. But it doesn't change the accuracy of the story. Off the record there are few in the field who would disagree with saying that Yau and his students are making an unwarranted grab for credit that is not theirs. But confronting Yau on the record is not smart unless you've got a Fields and Ivy professorship yourself (fat chance that for me).
Re:The article tells only part of the story. (Score:2, Interesting)
When I read the aforementioned statement, you lost all credibility. You are discrediting your thesis with such a biased opinion. Yes, Yau is a great mathematician, but so is Perelman.
Anyhow, most of your post is copy-paste of ramblings from some random BBS. It doesn't seem to have much substance.
Re:perhaps he has the best reward there is (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally, I drive a full-length mini-van, which I've found is far more pragmatic (certainly I get better mileage than many SUVs and have a ton of cargo space.) The reason I drive a mini-van rather than an SUV is that I do have a need to haul equipment and people around now and then, but have no need to prove anything to anyone about anything.
And don't try to justify your desire to be the biggest goddamn passenger vehicle around in order to feed your obviously massive ego by telling me how "practical" your SUV is. There's no "utility" in SUV. It's strictly a luxury vehicle for men with tiny packages and women who wish they had even that. Truth is, Affliction, that you picked the perfect nick for an SUV driver, because those machines and the criminally-negligent sociopaths that drive them are a blight on the highways. They're a danger to themselves and others
I'm sorry (actually, I'm not, because you sure sound like a typical SUV owner) but if you don't want to be put in the category of "rolling four-wheeled dick" your best bet is simply not to drive one. A friend of mine came up with a solution for the problem of Excursions and Yukons and all the rest of those overpowered, underbrained examples of conspicuous consumption: require CV (Commercial Vehicle) licenses in order to drive them. Maybe the extra training required will teach you little pricks something about safety and the fact that you don't own the goddamn road.
Have a nice day.
Re:Some people don't want to be famous (Score:3, Interesting)
I still see no specifics why he moved in with her (sickness, mama's boy?, etcetera) but money does not seem to be an issue here. And he may accept the million dollar prize too - he didn't say he would give a definite answer until offered.
Re: don't blame Gruber and Nasar (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes, I have to agree with pedantic bore's translation:
Michael T. Anderson (SUNY at Stony Brook) probably thought that he would not be quoted, that his ideas were going to be presented without a direct link to his name. As I'll explain he seems to have had enough motives to use this opportunity to execute his own vendetta against Shing-Tung Yau (Harvard) by instigating reporters to deviate from main topic of the Poincaré Conjecture and Thurston's Geometrization conjecture to an indictment of Yau, and his work.
In my opinion there is little doubt that the article by Gruber and Nasar is grossly biased against Shing-Tung Yau, and to a lesser extent to his collaborators, including Richard S. Hamilton (Columbia). However I don't think that it is correct to blame only the reporters for this. I believe in spite of claims that the quotes are inaccurate, out-of-context, ... they are probably correct. It is common for reporters to face such claims and professionals are normally prepared for possible denials. In fact, we might find out that everything said in this case is recorded on tape.
If we are willing to assume that the quotes are correct, then the question remains: why Nasar and Gruber came up with an article so denigrating of Yau, Hamilton, and/or Chinese mathematics? Most likely they were led into this direction by the people they interviewed.. This does not completely clear them, since they did fail miserably in investigating the possible reasons those interviewed had for badmouthing Shing-Tung Yau and his collaborators.
I'll present just one single example to make my point. To some in the field it has been known that for many years Mike Anderson had also been behind proving Thurston's Geometrization Conjecture, and hence Poincaré's Conjecture. He wrote several extremely long papers and claimed to have proved the conjecture. People were a little suspicious about Anderson's work mainly because it did not involve any new ideas, and because it was so long and almost repetitive. To honor what appeared to be a tremendous achievement by Michael T. Anderson, Shing-Tung Yau, in a very generous and friendly gesture promised to dedicate at least one issueof the Journal of Differential Geometry [JDG] in its entirety exclusively to Anderson's work. Yau is the Editor-in-Chief of this prestigious publication. In contrast with Perelman's choice, Anderson did not post his articles at arxiv.org, or made them very widely available. After the announcements and celebrations the review process started in secrecy, Anderson was probably afraid somebody might fix his gaps and find and fix errors, forcing him to share the honor. However after a few months problems appeared with Anderson's work. Whether they were serious or not is not for me to say. But Yau reluctantly decided that Anderson's work was not up to the high standards of the JDG, and explicitly told him to look for another place to publish his work. Assuming he could fix it.
Mike Anderson sincerely believed he had solved the problem of the century. He even had a celebration at the end of his sequence of summer lectures at Stony Brook, with food and champagne. Peter Zograf (Steklov Mathematical Institute, Saint Petersburg), Dennis Parnell Sullivan (CUNY), and other well known mathematicians were present. Some where privately a little skeptic, but they honored Anderson anyway. After having received all this recognition, and in spite of the existence of objections by the referee, it was probably very hard for Anderson to swallow Yau's refusal to allow his paper to appear in the Journal of Differential Geometry, probably the most prestigious publication for geometers. Anderson appealed Yau's decision. He even tried to get other mathematicians to intercede. But Yau did not see any reasons to change his opinion. At that moment Anderson might have felt that Yau was acting "as a king" b