Can I
suggest this addition to mathematical terminology?
doing a Perelman = making a voluntary retreat from the
math circuit to preserve one’s own well-being (either mental,
physical, scientific …).
As in : “I’m doing a
Perelman ever since that Oberwolfach meeting in 2002″
I
guess by now everyone has read the New Yorker-article by Sylvia Nasar
and David Gruber
Manifold Destiny. A legendary problem and the battle over who solved
it. summarized in the accompanying drawing
In
case you never made it to the last page, here is the crucial paragraph
No tag for this post.
Perelman repeatedly said that he had retired from the mathematics community and no longer considered himself a professional mathematician. He mentioned a dispute that he had had years earlier with a collaborator over how to credit the author of a particular proof, and said that he was dismayed by the discipline’s lax ethics.
“It is not people who break ethical standards who are regarded as aliens,” he said. “it is people like me who are isolated.”
We asked him whether he had read Cao and Zhu’s paper. “It is not clear to me what new contribution did they make,” he said. “Apparently, Zhu did not quite understand the argument and reworked it.”
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.”
3 comments
Posted in rants
Written on Fri, 08 September 2006 at 3:07 pm
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January 5th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
[...] (probably due to my inadequate English). I never suggested ‘unappreciated researchers’ to pull a Perelman but rather the key figures in seemingly successful groups making outrageous claims for [...]
January 5th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
[...] closeby subjects making no outrageous claims…). My advice to people making such claims is : do a Perelman! Rather than doing a PR-job, devote yourself for as long as it takes to prove your hopes, somewhere [...]
January 23rd, 2008 at 2:11 pm
[...] the Arcadian Functor) At the time of the doing the Perelman-post someone rightfully commented that “making a voluntary retreat from the math circuit to [...]