THE SHAPE OF THE UNIVERSE

- A MORE-OR-LESS FOUND POEM

A Russian (said to be the World's Cleverest Man)
has turned down a million-dollar prize
for solving one of mathematics' toughest puzzles.

Dr Grigori Perelman, 44,
who lives as a recluse with his mother
in a small flat on a run-down housing-estate
in outer St Petersburg, said through the closed door:
"I have all I want."
She said: "We don't want to talk to anyone."

They both share her $75-a-month pension
because he has been unemployed since 2006.

The Millennium Prize was given in 2006
by the Clay Mathematics Institute
for his solution of the Poincaré Conjecture, posed in 1904.


Dr Perelman openly e-mailed his solution in 2002,
but failed to turn up to receive his prestigious Fields Medal
(equivalent to a Nobel Prize)
from the International Mathematical Union
in Madrid four years ago.

At the time he stated:
"I'm not interested in money or fame.
I don't want to be on display like an animal in a zoo.

"I'm not a hero of mathematics.
I'm not even that successful.
That's why I don't want to have everybody looking at me.

"If the proof is correct then no further recognition is needed.

"I do not think anything that I say can be
of the slightest public interest."

Neighbour Vera Petrovna said:
"I was once in his flat and I was astounded.
He only has a table, a stool and a bed with a dirty mattress
which was left by previous owners:
alcoholics who sold the flat to him.

"We are trying to get rid of cockroaches in our block,
but they hide in his flat."

Dr Perelman once said to an American journalist:
"...there are many mathematicians who are more or less honest.
But almost all of them are conformists."

"He is someone who sees the world a little bit in black and white,"
said Marcus Du Sautoy, Oxford University's Professor
for the Public Understanding of Science - who obviously
has little understanding of morality, let alone meta-morality.

Dr Perelman is also a talented violinist.
His sister lives in Stockholm.
She, too, an eminent mathematician.

In March 2010, it was announced that he was the first person
to meet the criteria for
the Clay Mathematical Institute's Millennium Prize,
also worth one million dollars, but that he had declined it, too.
No-one else has been offered one of these prizes.

The Poincaré Conjecture was more than 100 years old
when Dr Perelman solved it
- and could help determine the shape of the universe.