The winners of the 2006 Fields Medals are Terence Tao and Grigori Perelman (as widely predicted), also Andrei Okounkov, and Wendelin Werner. For some more information, see the press releases at the ICM site.
Okounkov’s mathematical work has been in the area of representation theory and its links to combinatorics. His work in mathematical physics is well-known, relating random partitions and the statistical mechanics of certain crystals to Gromov-Witten and Seiberg-Witten theory (counting holomorphic curves and instantons). For some nice expository papers of his about this, see here, here, and here.
Wendelin Werner I know little about, his work involves 2d random walks and is related to CFT. There has been a lot of activity recently in this field, and there’s a related program going on this semester at the KITP. A friend wrote to me this morning to speculate that this is the same Wendelin Werner who at age 12 appeared in the film “La Passante du Sans-Souci”.
Update: Luca Trevisan is blogging from the conference.
Today the arXiv servers contain the message ” arXiv.org servers are currently under very heavy load due to demand for Grisha Perelman’s papers, published only as arXiv.org e-prints, which are available below.”
Do we know if G. Perelman has accepted the prize ?
apparently not.
It appears Grigori has chosen not to accept the medal. He has also declined Clay prizes and position offers form Princeton, Stanford. He surely has his own reasons.
Definitely an interesting development.
Gregory F. Lawler, Oded Schramm and Wendelin Werner received the George Polya Prize for the work on stochastic Loewner evolution (SLE), and Schramm and Werner both individually received the Loève in probability theory (in 2003 and 2005, respectively; I believe Lawler was too old for the Polya prize). Does this mean Oded Schramm is already favored for a Fields Medal down the road?
By the way, stochastic Loewner evolution was a great advance in probability theory and statistical physics: it let people prove a whole bunch of interesting conjectures that had previously been unproven, including some related to conformal field theory.
The slides from the Laudatios about the Medallists’ work may now be found by clicking on “Prizes” in the left frame here. (couldn’t seem to get a direct link to work…)
Regarding Schramm, he was actually already too old for a Fields this year, having been born in 1961 according to the citation for his 2003 Poincare Prize. In the interview on the page Peter W. linked to, Werner mentioned that he felt like the medal was for all three of Lawler, Schramm, and himself, even though the other two were over the age limit.
Yes he is the passant du sans souci and also a beautifully nice guy helping probability to be associated not only with markets !
My understanding of Werner’s field SLE (Stochastic (or Schramm) Loewner Evolution) and its relation to CFT is as follows:
Various spin models in statphys are related to graphical problems, when you make a graphical (high-temperature) expansion of the partition function. E.g., percolation is described by the q-state Potts model in the limit q -> 1, and self-avoiding walks (SAWs) by the N-vector model when N -> 0. E.g., the partition function of the Potts model is sum_G q^c u^L, where the sum runs over graphs G, c is the number of clusters, L the number of links, and u is related to temperature. Note that in the graphical formulation, q and N don’t need to be integers.
Spin models at criticality are described by conformally invariant QFTs. In particular in 2D, the nice ones are the minimal models, with central charge c = 1 – 6/m(m+1) and anomalous dimension h = (pm – q(m+1))/6m(m+1). The central charge is related to the parameters q and N above; q = 2, N = 1 and c = 1/2 is the Ising model, whereas geometrical models typically correspond to the c -> 0 limit. Moreover, critical exponents correspond to anomalous dimensions on the CFT side and to fractal dimensions on the geometrical side, as D = 2 – 2h. In particular, when c -> 0 and p and q integer or half-integers (there is a reason why you need half-integers too, but I don’t remember), we have D = (100 – n^2)/48, n integer. This formula covers many well-known fractals, such as the percolation cluster (D = 91/48), the percolation hull (D = 7/4), the SAW (D = 4/3), and the red links (D = 3/4).
Whereas the relation between geometrical phase transitions and CFT was intensely studied by physicists in the 1980s, many things remained conjectural. E.g., conformality was only assumed (and supported numerically), never rigorously proven. Some ten years ago, percolation was becoming studied by mathematicians coming from stochastic processes (Werner, Schramm, Loewner, Smirnov come to mind). Here you regard the e.g. the boundary of the percolation cluster as a stochastic process, a modified form of Brownian motion depending on a parameter kappa, called rapidity and closely related to the central charge; c = 0 is kappa = 6.
Within SLE you can rigorously prove formulas written down by physicists 20 years ago. There is obviously a close connection between SLE and CFT, which has been investigated by a number of people, e.g. John Cardy, and I think that this is more or less a bijection. These theories also share the same glaring limitation, namely the restriction to 2D.
Another discussion of SLE can be found here.
It’s a bit rough on Tao and the others — Perelman’s achievement completely and utterly dwarfs theirs.
Until a press release or formal comunication from Perelman regarding the award of the Fields medal is seen, it can be safely said that he accepted the Fields medal. and so far there is none.
Hi, ok my comments on this post was wrong
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=350
Tao has win the Medal.
Congratualions to him and to this blog for the correct forecasting.
zerocold
Also, I would like to add my congratulations to
Kiyoshi Itô, winner of the Gauss prize for applied mathematics! I predicted this last year! Finally the bias against applied work has been lifted.
Finally, it is interesting that nobody on this site is particularly interested in Andrei Okounkov!
This a string theory discussion site, and Okounkov’s work (connecting strings to algebraic combinatorics) will probably end up being one of the more lasting aspects of string theory.
Here is an article by S Nasar on Perelman from The New Yorker
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060828fa_fact2
To axion:
Do you really imagine it’s so rough being aknowleged as one of the best mathematicians in the world, but still having someone better than you?
Judging from the physicists I know, even smart people are usually satisfied with being “merely” very good at what they do.
zerocold,
My suspicion is that someone blabbed to Lubos about Tao at an early stage in the process, long before Tao was notified that he had won. So, when he answered your e-mail asking him about this, he was answering truthfully.
What a magnificent article!
-r
D R Lunsford said “What a magnificent article!”
Could you elaborate?
I find the claim that the achievements of Perelman dwarf those of the other Fields medalists highly questionable. Tao’s diverse accomplishments in p.d.e.s, harminic analysis, number theory, combinatorics are awesome – for example see his web page or, when they are posted on the ICM site (not yet – I just looked), Fefferman’s laudation and Tao’s lecture.
Christine Dantas blog has a nice article from the BBC News about the declining of the Fields medal by Perelman. Citing that the president of the IMU John Ball, travelled to St.Petersburg to talk with Perelman to know the reasons of his declining to accept the Medal. So; I guess this makes it official the declining of the Medal by Perelman.
Sylvia Nasar’s article is beautifully written, well-researched and clearly explains Perelman’s choice.
Much better than the millions of uninformed papers describing the reclusive borscht-eating weirdo of St Petersburg.
It’s funny how it has been the talk of all maths common rooms for years that some famous chinese mathematicians are ridiculously bullish, but things don’t seem to have improved much (though this seems to be just one example of an attitude with which Perelman refuses to have anything to do).
After reading Sylvia Nasar’s paper I wish Perelman made a public statement to accompany his refusal.
Please, personal attacks on anyone involved in the Poincare story have no place here and will be deleted.
I read Nasar’s article, and indeed I learned gossip that I wasn’t aware of, even though I know some of the people involved. It was entertaining.
That being said, I think it plays to the stereotype that
Chinese mathematicians are “technical” but not profound
(I speak mainly of her description of Yau’s Fields medal
achievements), and moreover “bullish” (to borrow from
GeomGeek above).
What’s wrong with describing the truth about ill conduct?
Nothing, per se — but in the interest of balance, I wonder how many other (influential) mathematicians act similarly, albeit in less famous instances; e.g., protecting the work/unrealistic promotion of one’s students (say unfairly
at the cost of others), or undue influence of hiring committees and journals?
On the one hand, Luca Trevisan writes a useful blog of the ICM activities, where she says “John Ball starts his speech by explaining how…work is appreciated solely based on its merits, not on the way it is promoted.” (Come on…) On the other hand, we have Nasar’s description of Yau’s behaviour, juxtaposed prominently with his heritage.
The reader of this blog could easily come away with the impression of the benevolence of mathematicians save a certain subset. I don’t think that paints a fair picture at all. With fame/power/influence, academics of any stripe can and sometimes do take advantage of their position. Newton did it to Leibniz, and as an example, it isn’t first, last, or uncommon.
You’re right, tg, for saying that bad behavior is not uncommon in academia. This is unfortunate because scientists and scholars are supposed to be distinguished from politicians in that they ought to have a tremendous respect for truth — not half or one-sided truth — but the whole truth.
tg,
I don’t think the article was promoting the idea that Chinese mathematicians are “technical” rather than profound, and in any case Chern and many others provide excellent counterexamples. However, what is going on in China as the country becomes much more prosperous and influential, quickly developing a new and large mathematics research community, definitely seems to be part of the story here.
tg,
You say the article plays to a stereotype of the bullishness of Chinese mathematicians…well, there’s a plural there, and the reader of the article does indeed encounter more than one Chinese mathematician. Do you think Nasar and Gruber portray Tian that way, for example? I sure didn’t come off with that impression.
While it’s surely true that prominent academics in any field sometimes use their influence in non-even-handed ways, some senior mathematicians that I’ve talked to (both before and after his sallies in the Chinese media back in June) have indicated that Yau’s persistent efforts to disparage the work and integrity of certain other researchers goes well beyond anything that they’ve seen from anyone else. I think that that aspect of Yau’s personality is an important bit of context for understanding the present situation, and when I read the article I was relieved that Nasar and Gruber felt no obligation to hide it.
From the New Yorker’s press release on the 8/28 issue:
In this particular food fight, Tian’s optimal game plan to play saintly, and watch as Yau self-destructs.
Dear q2,
Certainly, Yau’s personality/behavior is (in)famous. As I said previously, I see nothing wrong with exposing the truth. However, I also asked for context, since that clearly affects how we absorb the said truth (e.g., “hearing only one side of the story…” blah blah).
In this case, Nasar and Gruber could easily have included a sentence or two from a neutral authority to the effect of “in math, as in academia more generally, there are always priority fights and bad behaviour, from all kinds….Yau is today’s unfortunate example”. I believe they deserved to, because they so closely tie Yau with the Chinese –a point they insisted on emphasizing, which is incidental to Perelman’s plight.
I believe they know the stereotype, and in general, it makes for a more entertaining article to exploit the reader’s reaction “oh yeah, there they go again…”. Indeed, as you say, there’s a plurality of Chinese involved in the story. However, my impression was that none were portrayed as bucking that stereotype. Some (Tian) were merely portrayed neutrally.
For example, with regards to the “technical” sentiment (and in response to Woit’s remarks), Nasar and Gruber do not say “Chern was among the most original and inventive geometers in history”. To the layman reader (being a Newyorker article), Chern’s only role is to give birth to Yau.
Finally, yes, the senior people you speak to, find Yau’s actions extremal. However, are his actions portrayed as they are, and he made a singularity of, in part because he’s Chinese? I think so.
Finally, yes, the senior people you speak to, find Yau’s actions extremal. However, are his actions portrayed as they are, and he made a singularity of, in part because he’s Chinese? I think so.
I don’t buy this, because I really can’t think of either:
(a) Any other living pure mathematician of any ethnicity who has shown Yau’s penchant for engaging in (and enlisting the media in, e.g. in his interview about Tian last year) ugly, highly public turf wars; or
(b) Any other Chinese mathematician whose reputation for bad behavior among senior people at all resembles Yau’s.
If Nasar and Gruber had portrayed Yau’s antics as somehow common among mathematicians, in my opinion it would have been a serious misrepresentation of the current culture of pure mathematics. You’re going to have to come up with a much more recent example than Newton-Leibniz to convince me otherwise.
Dear q2,
I hear what you are saying. I claim that Yau’s behaviour is not really that different than what many academics in math (and elsewhere) do. I don’t think that’s a serious misrepresentation. It just turns out that in most cases, the setting is not nearly as famous as a battle of Fields medallists, concerning a (truly) important open problem, or within a popularly known area such as string theory.
If I mentioned people I thought that were essentially no better than Yau in some given area of pure mathematics, chances are many would never know about it, nor really care to talk about it. Most topics in pure math just aren’t that well connected, unfortunately.
You know that I can hardly start naming names. But generally, e.g., it is not uncommon that I see good jobs going to certain people, or papers being accepted to important journals under objectively odd circumstances — while at the same time other qualified people or papers are shut out. These phenomena are often euphemistically called “white noise” or “randomness” in the system. Politics is involved; why deny this?
This is not an indictment of our field. I just wish Yau’s behaviour would be cast in this context.
“In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the stakes at issue — that is why academic politics are so bitter.” — Wallace S. Sayre
Nothing so ephemeral as acknowledgement.
Yesterday a review of conformal random geometry, which is Werner’s field, appeared on the arxiv: math-ph/0608053. It is written by Bertrand Duplantier, who for the past 20 years has been the leader of this field, having used CFT methods to compute more fractal dimensions than you want to know about.
I understand it would take tremendous personal courage and the purity of heart, so the hope is slim, but what would you think of if – for the sake of Science and the future of the field – Yau stood up, apologized to Perelman (regardless of who’s wrong in this situation), and invited him back to Mathematics?
In that case there won’t be any losers… otherwise, we all lose.
Are deeds like this possible in modern research?
TTT,
I don’t think Perelman actually cares one way another about Yau. He’s been quite consistent in his life that he wants nothing to do with the standard reward system of academia and questions of who gets recognized for what. Unfortunately, the New Yorker article didn’t really explain what he’s up to now: what was the problem at Steklov? is he still thinking about math? The reaction of some mathematicians I’ve talked to about the article is that the authors missed a chance to find out what they would really like to know: what is the guy working on now?
So people do believe he decided to secretly stay in Math?
In that case they are in trouble, because:
A person who can live on milk, bread, and butter, who is free from the pressure of find/keep-a-position-publish-publish-publish-or-die system, and who doesn’t care whether some intermediate result would be named after him, has a huge advantage over the rest of them. Unlike many who want to put any reasonably interesting idea out their as soon as possible for all the world to see, he can continue working on whatever he wants without attracting ANY attention and without giving away ANY precious clues.
How long did he stay in the US doing postdocs? 4-5 years? Let’s say he saved $200,000 during that time. In Russia, he can live on that with no financial worry for the rest of his life.
At the rate of 8 years per millennium problem, he will solve all of them by 2050.
A rather original way of doing research which, experience shows, happens to be extremely effective,…….. provided you are a genius, of course. Any geniuses out there who wanna try that too?:)
I don’t know what happened between Perelman and the Steklov, but I imagined it was time to renew his affiliation and someone asked him to fill in some routine form, just like everyone else, and Perelman characteristically said something like
“If you want me here, you will not ask me to fill in a form, and if you ask me to fill in a form, you don’t want me here”,
and things escalated and the mole became a mountain and he eventually lost his job. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s how it happened. He seems to be that kind of person.
MathPhys wrote:
“If you want me here, you will not ask me to fill in a form, and if you ask me to fill in a form, you don’t want me here.”
The second half of this statement is just the contrapositive of the first half. Now, would the very-terse Perelman need to repeat himself unnecessarily? 🙂
He’s quoted in The NewYorker as saying things like that:
When a member of a hiring committee at Stanford asked him for a C.V. to include with requests for letters of recommendation, Perelman balked. “If they know my work, they don’t need my C.V.,” he said. “If they need my C.V., they don’t know my work.”
Zelah said:
In fact, Hans Foellmer, who gave the Gauss Prize address honoring Ito, mentioned your comment as “a posting on the internet”. Congratulations, you’re famous.
A historical quote that many might feel is applicable to Yau (as depcited in the New Yorker article):
“This excessive impudence is unbelievable in a man who has sufficient personal merit not to have need of appropriating the discoveries of others.”
For those who don’t recognize it, it’s an English translation of a comment made by Legendre in 1820 regarding Gauss. Gauss, in some well-known instances during his life, chose to minimize the contributions of others or claim at least partial priority based upon his unpublished work. In Gauss’ case, the claims all appear to be justified, but they do come across as self-serving and had detrimental effects in certain cases (e.g. J. Bolyai).
Perelman has won my respect once again after my reading of New Yorker’s article. What puzzles me is why the math community is so slow to declare his victory, and even more important, so slow to produce new results from Perelman’s genius ideas. In ICM 2006 they only declared the Poincare conjecture been solved. What about Thurston’s geometrization conjecture? Manuscript by Morgan and Tian treats only Poincare conjecture. Cao and Zhu do have a complete treatment of geometrization conjecture, this is also where they claim they don’t fully understand Perelman’s arguments (in contrary to Morgan-Tian) and substitute their own results (weaker than Perelman’s assertions). As a layman, I enjoy reading Cao-Zhu’s treatise more than other two.
Perelman’s quit is regretable, but we shall respect his choice for whatever reason. I hope he will come back. It’s a pitty that he no long has personal impact to math, unlike great Alexander Grothendieck who changed half math world before left. I have learned recently that Grothendieck’s father was deported and murdered at Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz. (His mother was German.) Grothendieck himself has rejected awards on his pacifist stance, or saying something like he has enough for living from his pension. Truly admirable person!
Grothendieck also had wives and children that he totally abandoned.
To MathPhys,
Is he insane?
I read some of his (Grothendieck’s) autobiographical notes a while ago (I’m not so sure if what I read is formally part of “Récoltes et Semailles”, or not).
There he describes how during meditation he sees visions and talks with the angels. Does that make him insane? I don’t know, but he surely lives in a world of his own.
Dear MathLover,
Re: “and even more important, so slow to produce new results from Perelman’s genius ideas.”
Some reasons I can think of:
(1) Few people (professional mathematicians) understand consequences/deeper aspects of his work (beyond the Poincare conjecture).
(2) Those that do (Lott, Yau, Cao et al) were busy just trying to get his arguments to be believed (otherwise why bother with the next step if it’s all wrong?).
(3) The feeling that Perelman’s work has “killed” the field, so new graduate students and others are loath to bother continuing on.
(4) Work _is_ being done. Math takes time, man.
Peter,
I am a little disappointed by your response to TTT. Not by your comments, of course, but by the reactions of your mathematician friends to the New Yorker article. Are they really so concerned about “what is the guy working on now”? Do they have worry at all about “what is the guy living on now”? Are they interested at all in finding out if Perelman needs any help? I truly hope that the mathematics community will at least try to find out the answer to the question that you raised “what was the problem at Steklov?”, and provide help when Perelman needs.
Sylvia Nasar and David Gruber went to St. Petersburg, not to find the answer on the well-being of Perelman, but to find the answer from Perelman on the question of who should get credit for the proof of Poincare conjecture. They are more interested in the “who should get credit for what” controversy surrounding the proof of Poincare conjucture, and how they can write and sell a story. They found, of course, the wrong person to answer their questions. But they certainly have all the materials to write a good story.
The materials that they have gathered are so good that many of the science writers could only dream of. There is Poincare conjecture, one of the toughest mathematical problems in the universe. Solving this problem will not only lead one to Fields medal but also to the million-dollar prize given by the Clay Institute. There are the non-inventive Chinese mathematician (Yau), who not only steals other peoples work but also want to be the king of geometry and to take credit from everybody else’s work; the friendless Russian Jew and mathematical genius (Perelman), who proved the Poincare conjecture but rejected the Fields medal. The credit for his work is now in danger of being stolen; and the unremarkable American playboy mathematician (Hamilton), who needs constant push by Yau but still cannot get the job done. There is also a list of very much involved mathematicians whose names are associated with many of the well know universities.
Anyone who read Sylvia Nasar’s previous book on mathematicians, A Beautiful Mind, will acknowledge that Nasar is an excellent writer, and will also find that this time she is having even better materials to write about mathematicians. She has a Chinese villain, a Russian genius. The potential for portrait of sex, money and Fields medal, all mixed up with an even tougher mathematical problem, not to mention the fuss and controversy about “who should get credit for what”. With a little spin, or even without spin, Sylvia Nasar and David Gruber could have written a fascinating and believable tale. The problem is that there is that controversy and some spins are necessary. Spin, however, is a different form of art, an art form that is often mastered by political speechwriters. As storywriters, Nasar and Gruber are obviously not experts on spinning. They have over done their spin.
To spin properly, one must first get the facts right, and then spins the facts to his/her favor. Spin over zealously without the facts can have dire consequences. One example is Bush administration’s spin on the Iraq’s WMD, we all know that we are now in a mess in Iraq.
There are too many over zealous spins to count in the Nasar-Gruber article. Here I list a few and point out their not so pleasant implications.
A large part of the Nasar-Gruber article is devoted to Yau, he is described as a Chinese mathematician who wants to solve the Poincare conjecture for China. He was also anxious to become the next famous Chinese mathematician after Chern. The fact is, both Chern and Yau are Americans. When Chern was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1975 and Yau was awarded the same medal in 1997, each of them was cited as one of the best American mathematicians at the time. Referring Yau and Chern as Chinese mathematicians is as ridiculous as referring Nasar as a Middle Eastern writer. To make their story, Naser-Gruber have used false information about one of the main characters in the story. In an article that partially committed to reveal the dishonesty of Yau, they committed some dishonest acts of their own. What a spin!
Anyone reads New York Times and books beyond mathematics would know that China is a communist country. It has one of the worst human rights record in the world according to the latest UN human rights report. In a communist country, power belongs only to the communist party. It controls every aspect of people’s life, including mathematics. As for today, a New York Times researcher is still in prison in China. To reach the power structure in that country, you have to be a member of the communist party. To have power, you would have to be a powerful party member. Nasar-Gruber have us believe, through Joseph Kohn, that “Yau’s not jealous of Tian’s mathematics, but he’s jealous of his power back in China.” But, do Nasar-Gruber also try to tell us that Tian is a powerful member of that repressive and corrupted communist party, and some of Yau’s accusation of Tian’s corruption may be accurate? We do not know the truth. But to spin so hard that brings doubt to their own arguments is a bad example of spin.
I was hoping that the New Yorker article could have told us more about Perelman’s current situation, especially after reading the article published by Telegraph.co.uk. There is not much about Perelman that we haven’t read before in the Nasar-Gruber article, then again Nasar-Gruber were writing about the “battle over who solved” Poincare conjecture. What we are supposed to learn from the article is about the battle, not about Perelman. But in one of the occasions that Perelman talked to them, they leave us the impression that Perelman was contradicting himself. According to Nasar-Gruber, “Perelman repeatedly said that he had retired from the mathematics community and no longer considered himself a professional mathematician.” Yet when asked about Cao-Zhu’ paper, which had just been published, Perelman knew the paper well, and did not see “what new contribution did they make”. That is good news. It shows that Perelman still goes to library and read the current issues of mathematical journals. Moreover, Perelman also knew that it was “Zhu did not quite understand the argument and reworked it.” Without reading the paper, Perelman would not have known that his proof was reworked. Without involving in the mathematics community, he would not have known that, in the Cao-Zhu paper, it was Zhu, not Chao, who has reworked his proof. Zhu is probably the one who reworked Perelman’s proof, but this is not obvious even for people who are involved in the mathematics community. Perelman, as we all know by now, has no need to contradict himself. He probably did not even care about Cao-Zhu’ paper, for he has already done the proofs three years ago. The only possibility for the contradiction is that, to spin about the “battle”, Nasar-Gruber needed not only to ask the question, but also needed an answer. The answer described in the story might very well indicate that they made up this part of story. Again, we do not know the truth. But this time Nasar-Gruber manage to bring doubts on themselves.
I cannot remember who said this “writers never lie, they just make up stories.”
It is unfortunate that the mathematics community was incapable of and incompetent in determining the completeness of Perelman’s proofs of the conjectures. It has to rely on storywriters to help them to fight a “battle”. After all the Washington style of dirt digging, mud slinging and spitting in the faces, is it time to go back to check the proofs again?
Jeremy,
I think most mathematicians aren’t concerned about whether Perelman has enough to live on, since they are well aware that he has turned down many offers that could provide him with more money if that’s what he needs. The most recent is the Fields, which carried some money with it. The mathematicians at many institutions (including my own), have contacted him with offers to pay him very well to come visit, give lectures, and discuss mathematics. He has turned all these down, mostly not even bothering to respond to them. This is his choice as to how to arrange his life, and it has worked for him so far. Working this way by himself he figured out how to make more progress on mathematics than anyone else in recent years.
As I wrote, it is a shame that Nasar-Gruber didn’t explain what the problem with the Steklov was, maybe that was something other mathematicians could intervene to help with, maybe not.
As for the comments about the “corrupt communist party member” Tian, please don’t again post this kind of personal attack here. When you do it, you don’t exactly help your case in complaining about the article’s unfair personal attacks on Yau.
In a situation such a Perelman’s (or Yau’s) you don’t get the complete picture from one article in the New Yorker, because to write such an article means that the authors have a story to tell, with a beginning, middle, end and moral. Think of the Nasar-Gruber article as a data point. The unpacking of Perelman’s results will be another.
Woit,
I don’t think Jeremy was trying to say that. Please go back to read his lines.
On the other hand, coming from China, I also feel Jeremy has somewhat unwittingly exaggerated the role of “communism” in China’s scientific research. The reality is, in science, as long as you are truly good (researchwise, not playing politics), you will be profoundly respected.
But the problem with the current China is, after virtually only 20 years’ of reform and openning to the outside world (recall how the Cultural Revolution completely destroyed science and scientific spirit), China has not been able to produce many truly outstanding world-class researchers. During such a period of transition, you can imagine why some people are playing politics to gain funding and prestige. Compared with Pelerman, they are shameful.
On the other hand, Yau has been a courageous fighter in China to attack all the major corruptions in China’s academia. In China, if you want get things done, it is better to take the top-down approach (not bottom-up). It has been said that even the Chinese Premier is now paying attention to Yau’s words on how to stop all the acadmic corruptions and unfair playing rules (esp to young native Chinese researchers).
Just share some random thoughts with all the new friends here….
The Fields 2006 citation for Perelman says that:
“his results provide a way of resolving … the Poincare
Conjecture and the Thurston Geometrization Conjecture.”
and that the math community is still checking his work and
no one has found serious problems in the work.
Is this the same as unequivocally declaring that
the two Conjectures have been resolved by Perelman and
that there are no problems in the work?
Or, is this a best-case compromise IMU can possibly make
between not recognizing his work in 2006 2-3 years after
Perelman’s posting and 100% recognizing it now but with a small
chance of having to deal with a serious problem or
gap someone may find in the work some time down the road?
Can someone shed some light?
Thanks,