Unsentimental Sentiment

No Recognition Wanted

I respect Grigori Perelman. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 2006, math’s equivalent to the Nobel Prize, and refused the medal along with its $1 million award. Perelman gave us insight into the shape of the universe and decided he didn’t need any other form of recognition than his work itself. 

He is a recluse who works on math problems with his mother in a trailer park in St. Petersberg. His mom stopped her graduate work in mathematics to raise a math prodigy instead.

Perelman recounts the conversation he had with Sir John Ball, president of the International Mathematical Union: “He proposed to me three alternatives: accept and come; accept and don’t come, and we will send you the medal later; third, I don’t accept the prize. From the very beginning, I told him I have chosen the third one… [the prize] was completely irrelevant for me. Everybody understood that if the proof is correct, then no other recognition is needed. I’m not interested in money or fame,’ he is quoted to have said at the time. ‘I don’t want to be on display like an animal in a zoo. I’m not a hero of mathematics. I’m not even that successful; that is why I don’t want to have everybody looking at me.”

True happiness does not require outside recognition.