Perfect Rigor
The true story of a mathematical mystery, a million-dollar prize, and the fate of genius in today's world.
In 2006, an eccentric Russian genius named Grigori Perelman solved Poincare's Conjecture, one of seven great unsolved mathamatical mysteries, the solution to any of which the Clay Institute, founded by Boston businessman Landon Clay in 2000 to promote mathematics, promis...
The true story of a mathematical mystery, a million-dollar prize, and the fate of genius in today's world.
In 2006, an eccentric Russian genius named Grigori Perelman solved Poincare's Conjecture, one of seven great unsolved mathamatical mysteries, the solution to any of which the Clay Institute, founded by Boston businessman Landon Clay in 2000 to promote mathematics, promised a million-dollar prize. It is widely expected that the first Clay Prize will be awarded to Perelman in October 2009, and it is equally widely expected that he will decline it. Why?
Masha Gessen set out to find out. In the manner of Nabokov's Real Life of Sebastian Knight , or more recently and accessibly, Sylvia Nasar's A Beautiful Mind , or even Elizabeth Gilbert's The Last American Man , Gessen explores the nature of Perelma's mind and the reasons for his unusual, increasingly isolated behavior.
Drawing on interviews with Perelman's teachers, classmates, coaches, teammates, and colleagues in Russia and the US, Gessen has constructed a gripping and tragic tale that sheds rare light on the nature of genius in the modern world.
玛莎·葛森 曾为《石板》、《新共和》、《名利场》、《纽约时报》以及其他出版物撰稿，现居俄罗斯。
玛莎·葛森的著作:
《血液的重要性： 从遗传病到设计婴儿---未来的基因世界中我们会变得怎样》
《复活节和路子雅: 我的祖母们如何度过希特勒的战火和斯大林的和平》
《再度死寂: 共产主义之后的俄罗斯学术界》
《此时彼地》（著者：瓦莱丽亚·娜碧科娃； 译者：玛莎·葛森）
《半个革命: 当代俄罗斯女性作家小说》（编辑及译者：玛莎·葛森）
《完美的证明: 一位天才和世纪数学的突破》