sufficiency

I have all I want.

Grigory (Grisha) Perelman, "the fearsomely brilliant and notoriously antisocial Russian mathematician," uttered through the closed door of his apartment on March 23rd of this year to the folks who tried to award him the $1M dollar Clay prize for proving the Poincaré Conjecture, according to the New York Review of Books.

Perelman is in the habit of refusing prizes. According to the same piece he turned down the Fields Medal in 2006 for the same proof, saying: “Everybody understood that if the proof is correct then no other recognition is needed," and in 1996 he refused a prize from the European Mathematical Society because "he believed that his work was not complete, that the judges were not qualified to assess it, and that he, not they, should decide when he should receive a prize."



Martha Glesson's book on Perelman, Perfect Rigor: A genius and the mathematical breakthrough of the century was also reviewed by the New Scientist back in November »