Connections Archive
Devotional: Perelman conjectures
30 March 2010
Dr Bruce Manners
Senior minister
Avondale College Seventh-day Adventist Church
Brilliant, but eccentric, there's a lot to like about the attitude of Grigory Perelman. He hit the news this past week as the man who said no to US$1 million.
A Russian mathematician, a few years back he claimed to have solved a problem that had baffled mathematicians for 100 years--the Poincare Conjecture. His solution has just been accepted as correct and worthy of the $1 million offered.
What was the Henri Poincare's conjecture? When I checked out Wikipedia, I came to the conclusion that half the problem is understanding the question.
"I'm not interested in fame or money," said Perelman when he refused to accept the prestigious Fields Medal at an International Congress of Mathematicians in Madrid four years ago. "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 is why I don't want everybody looking at me."
How refreshing is this in a world where celebrity and fame have become ends in themselves. Ours is a world where people clamber over each other to be seen and celebrity has become a marketable commodity, even for airheads.
This Russian Mathsputin is now a recluse living with his mother and sister. It seems he currently has little to do with mathematics. When a journalist tracked him down to ask about the $1 million, he called out through his closed door, "I have all I want."
That can't be right! We have a multibillion dollar industry working on making us dissatisfied so we'll want more. With Perelman, they've failed.
His attitude is biblical: "Don't love money; be satisfied with what you have." For the God believer, there's more, "For God has said, 'I will never fail you. I will never abandon you'" (Hebrews 13:5, NLT).
That's better than money in the bank.
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