By Kareem Carr
Dr. Grigoriy Perelman has received the first Millennium Prize for his work resolving the Poincaré conjecture. Congratulations to Dr. Perelman. A biography of Dr. Perelman, Perfect Rigor by Masha Gessen, was recently reviewed by the Graduate Student Blog Editor, Diana Davis.
The official press release is available in the form of this pdf file.
It made me really happy to hear this. This is a great moment for mathematics.
It could be interesting to know if Dr. Perelman has accepted the prize, can you give us an update on this matter?.
After reading Perfect Rigor, the biography of Perelman, I am quite sure that the Clay Institute made absolutely sure that Perelman would accept it before announcing the prize. Other organizations have made the mistake of announcing that they are giving Perelman a prize without running it by Perelman first, and have ended up with a major problem on their hands, so I would guess that Clay has tried to be proactive about this. However, according to Wikipedia:
On 18 March 2010, Perelman was awarded a Millennium Prize for solving the problem. It remains unclear whether he is going to accept or decline the prize. He has previously stated that “I’m not going to decide whether to accept the prize until it is offered.”
So we’ll have to watch for news.