After taking a three-month timeout, Russia's math whizz Grigori Perelman has finally turned down a $1,000,000 prize he won for having solved a century-old puzzle.
The Clay Mathematics Institute (CMI) in March awarded its Millennium Prize of $1 million to the reclusive mathematician for proving the 106-year-old Poincaré conjecture, a theorem about the nature of multidimensional space.
Dr. Perelman told the Interfax news agency on Thursday that he had informed the Institute about his decision a week ago.
The eccentric Russian genius said the decision to give him the prize was unfair, as U.S. mathematician Richard Hamilton of Columbia University equally contributed to the proof. Dr. Perelman used a technique developed by Dr. Hamilton, to solve the Poincare conjecture.
In 2006, Dr. Perelman refused to accept the Fields Medal, which is considered equal to the Nobel Prize.
Dr. Perelman's work gives mathematical descriptions of what the universe might look like and promises exciting applications in physics and other fields. Russian mathematician Mikhail Gromov said it would take the scientific community decades to build a new system of views based on Dr. Perelman's work.
After receiving his Ph.D., Dr. Perelman worked at the Steklov Institute of Mathematics in St. Petersburg before moving to the U.S. in the late 1980s to take posts at various universities. He returned to the Steklov several years later, spurning offers from Princeton, Stanford and other universities. However, in 2006, four years after cracking the Poincare riddle, he quit his job and has since been living a hermit life in the suburbs of St. Petersburg with his mother whose old age pension is reportedly the only source of living for both.
