Poincaré conjecture #2

Following up the story of the Poincaré conjecture, I read the info of another math genius 31-year-old Terence Tao, a Fields Medalist of 2006. He got his Ph.D. at the age of 20 from Princeton, promoted to full professor at the age of 24 at UCLA, has written 80+ journal papers. To common people like me, he became famous because of the Fields Medal. Truely amazing!

Then, how do I know Fields Medal? That is because Grigory Perelman, the mathematician who outperformed other geniuses by proving Poincaré conjecture, refused the medal and dramatically walked away from the math community. Sometimes awards make people famous, occasionally a person makes an award famous.

Very complicated Poincaré conjecture

What does math have anything to do with drama? We can find the answer by reading the very intensive, dramatic article in New Yorker “MANIFOLD DESTINY”. The story talks about the political struggle in the mathematic community to fight the credit of proving the century-old math problem Poincaré conjecture. Similar to the fairy tale Cinderella, there is a Cinderella-type pure heart, Russian mathematic genius Grigori Perelman. Of course, there is also the stepmother (prominent mathematician Shing-Tung Yau 丘成桐) who fought to rob away the handsome prince (Fields Medal, the Nobel Prize for mathematicians) for the ugly stepsisters (Yau’s disciples).

This New Yorker article is written by Sylvia Nasar, the author of A Beautiful Mind, the story of Nobel laureate John Nash. I guess Nasar is writing another novel about the life of Perelman, which I am sure is more fascinating than Nash's. (Just read of a few news reports: Russian may have solved great math mystery, 7/1/2004; Meet the cleverest man in the world (who's going to say no to a $1m prize) 8/16/2006; World's top maths genius jobless and living with mother, 8/20/2006. Actually, the titles tell the story well.)

Note that Yau has accused New Yorker of defamation on Sep. 20 (see his campaign website). Some mathematicians interviewed by Nasar condemned her distortion of their statements. Sounds like MANIFOLD DESTINY was made too dramatic.Many people defend Yau by attacking each of Nasar's accusation. However, the disturbing review process of Yau's disciples' research paper that claimed to completely solve the problem is still unanswered. I am deeply troubled by this because Yau had been my hero for decades. Apparently all mathematicians are smart in some ways, and crazy in other ways.

Image: New Yorker Issue of 2006-08-28.

Wikipedia vs. China's censors

The Observer interviewed Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, on the Chinese censorship on Wikipedia (see Wikipedia defies China's censors). Wales told The Observer: “We're really unclear why we would be [banned] … We have internal rules about neutrality and deleting personal attacks and things like this. We're far from being a haven for dissidents or a protest site.”

Obviously there is something Mr. Wales (and most Americans) don't understand: The Chinese government sometimes is the one violates neutrality or attacks individuals. How can Wales expect the Chinese government accepting the rules of Wikipedia?

Stephen Hawking hiring assistant!

We don't hear MIT hiring a dean from the news. We neither hear the President of the US hiring an intern unless something getting very wrong. Here, Stephen Hawking gets under spotlight because he is hiring a grad student (see link to CNN). Only Donald Trump can beat him on this. I wish I could have 10^-10% of such publicity when I want to hire an RA. I bet there will be thousands of young students applying for this position. Perhaps we will read another news from CNN that says “Wanted! Hiring assistant for Stephen Hawking to hire his Assistant.”

The emotional factor of Planetship

Perhaps the name Pluto is cute for most American kids, but the new definition of dwarf planets from the IAU is fine. It is a bad news for Pluto, but is a very good news for asteroids and Kuiper Belt objects. Now the elemental students will know that our solar system has much more than a sun and a few planets. Don't see any reason to protect Pluto's planetship (see Earth & Sky : Hope for Pluto?)