Grigori Perelman

Grigori Perelman

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Grigori Yakovlevich Perelman (Russian: Григо́рий Я́ковлевич Перельма́н , /ˈpɛrɨlmɑːn/ -il-mahn ; born on 13 June 1966), sometimes known as Grisha Perelman , is a Jewish Russian mathematician, who has made landmark contributions to Riemannian geometry and geometric topology. In particular, he proved Thurston's geometrization conjecture. This solves in the affirmative the Poincaré conjecture, posed in 1904, which before its solution was viewed as one of the most important and difficult open problems in topology.

In August 2006, Perelman was awarded the Fields Medal for "his contributions to geometry and his revolutionary insights into the analytical and geometric structure of the Ricci flow". Perelman declined to accept the award or to appear at the congress. On 22 December 2006, the journal Science recognized Perelman's proof of the Poincaré conjecture as the scientific "Breakthrough of the Year", the first such recognition in the area of mathematics. He has since ceased working on mathematics. On 18 March 2010, it was announced that he had met the criteria to receive the first Clay Millennium Prize Problems award of US $1,000,000 for resolution of the Poincaré conjecture but on July 1, 2010 he turned down this one million dollar prize saying that he believes his contribution in proving the Poincare conjecture was no greater than that of U.S. mathematician Richard Hamilton, who first suggested a program for the solution.

Early life and education

Grigori Perelman was born in Leningrad, USSR (now Saint Petersburg, Russia) on 13 June 1966, to Jewish parents, Yakov (who now lives in Israel) and Ludmila. His mother gave up graduate work in mathematics in order to raise him. His mathematical talent became apparent at the age of ten, and his mother enrolled him in Sergei Rushkin's after-school math training program.

His mathematical education continued at the Leningrad Secondary School #239, a specialized school with advanced mathematics and physics programs. In 1982, as a member of the USSR team competing in the International Mathematical Olympiad, an international competition for high school students, he won a gold medal, achieving a perfect score. In the late 1980s, Perelman went on to earn a Candidate of Science degree (the Soviet equivalent to the Ph.D.) at the Mathematics and Mechanics Faculty of the Leningrad State University, one of the lead