Grigory Perelman, the Russian mathematician who became famous for solving the enigmatic Poincaré Conjecture, is a figure as complex as the mathematical problems he tackled. But beyond his genius, what makes him an especially enigmatic character is his choice to withdraw from the world, refusing both money and recognition.
The Poincaré conjecture, a question about the nature of three-dimensional space formulated in 1904 by Henri Poincaré, was one of the seven mathematical problems of the millennium proposed by the Clay Mathematics Institute. The problem had baffled mathematicians for almost a hundred years until Perelman published his solution in 2002.
Such was the impact of his discovery that the Clay Institute of Mathematics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, offered to reward him with a million dollars, something that would have changed anyone's life. Although it took several years for his solution to be confirmed, the final consensus was clear: he had solved it.
But the amazing thing came later. Perelman not only refused the million dollars but also received the Fields Medal in 2006, considered the Nobel Prize in Mathematics. He also turned down numerous jobs at some of the world's most prestigious universities.
Instead, he decided to live with his mother and sister in a modest flat in St. Petersburg, a place apparently infested with cockroaches and rats. That is to say, in conditions clearly opposite to what would be expected of a genius.
Since then, he has kept a surprisingly low profile. He refuses to speak to the media and has cut himself off from the math community. The few images that exist of him after his removal show him looking disheveled, almost bum-like. An episode that shows his lifestyle was when a journalist tried to contact him by phone and Perelman, showing indifference, cut off the conversation saying: "You're bothering me. I'm picking mushrooms."
Since he withdrew from public scrutiny, one of the last visual indications of him is a photograph taken in a subway in 2007. In line with his modus vivendi, the genius appears in the image His current life remains a mystery, and he seems to prefer it that way.
Sergei Kisliakov, from the Steklov Institute of Mathematics where Perelman was until 2005, came to justify the reason for this behavior. He claimed that Perelman has an extremely strict ethical code and left the mathematical world because he felt that his colleagues lacked the ethical standards that he valued.
