The cable news channels have been falling all over themselves for the last few days, desperate to find something new to say about the JonBenet Ramsey fracas. Meanwhile, what do you suppose the lead story was on yesterday's edition of The Colbert Report? Grigory Perelman's refusal of the Fields Medal for his proof of the Poincare conjecture. Not only that, but Colbert even got the math right. An impressive performance, and another sad reminder that Comedy Central is just about the only place on television for serious news.
- Log in to post comments
More like this
The August 28 issue of The New Yorker features this magisterial article about the Poincare conjecture. The focus of the article is on the priority dispute between Grigory Perelman on the one hand, and a team of Chinese mathematicians led by Harvard's Shing-Tung Yau on the other. According to the…
About 10 days ago, I wrote about [Grigory Perelman and his proof of the Poincare conjecture][poincare]. This is a quick followup. There's a more detailed story over on [Seed][seed].
The Fields medal was supposed to be presented this past week, and they planned on presenting it to Perelman.
He…
Have to blog and run today. I get to spend three hours this afternoon trying to persuade skeptical calculus students that “related rate” problems aren't so bad. A forlorn quest, I know. Anyway, how about I just point you towards some interesting reading:
Over at CSICOP's site, Penny Higgins…
A comprehensive article at The New Yorker on Perelman, Poincaré conjecture and the politics of math. Perelman, as you might have read, refused the Fields medal - the nobel prize like award for math. From the article,
Mikhail Gromov, the Russian geometer, said that he understood Perelman's logic: "…
Well, I wouldn't say that taking a donut and mashing into a little ball and saying he's converted a torus into a sphere without tearing is getting "the math right."
But I know what you're saying. :-)
I'll allow him a little creative license on that one. And for saying toroid instead of torus. Still, I thought he was prett impressive.
I was most impressed by him noting that a rabbit is in fact a torus, not a sphere.
In fact, when did toroidal body shapes appear in evolution? There is a big structural difference between inclusions to digest food, and a through-and-through alimentary canal...