[HN Gopher] The Poincare Conjecture, Explained
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       The Poincare Conjecture, Explained
        
       Author : privatdozent
       Score  : 40 points
       Date   : 2021-07-31 21:07 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.privatdozent.co)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.privatdozent.co)
        
       | lgl wrote:
       | Also fascinating is the story of the man that eventually proved
       | the conjecture, Grigori Perelman [0], which famously later denied
       | the $1M Millennium prize as well as the Fields medal where he is
       | quoted as saying:
       | 
       | "The prize was completely irrelevant for me. Everybody understood
       | that if the proof is correct then no other recognition is
       | needed."
       | 
       | He later abandoned mathematics and returned to obscurity.
       | 
       | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman
        
         | fakesheriff wrote:
         | There's a Russian language documentary on YouTube worth
         | watching.
         | 
         | It's unlikely that he's given up mathematics. Publishing, yes.
         | Mathematics, no. If he'd finished his proof a few years later,
         | I suspect Perelman would have followed Satoshi's lead and
         | published as an anon. He just dumped dumped it on the arxiv, on
         | the random.
         | 
         | In the documentary, Gromov seemed a little miffed at Perelman.
         | As Gromov sees it, other mathematicians spent a lot of energy
         | helping Perelman progress and he kind of "owes" it to the
         | community to interact and mentor.
         | 
         | On the flip side, we should probably ask ourselves why someone
         | like Perelman would rather be a recluse than participate in the
         | community. The politics around his proof were particularly
         | nasty, but I have to wonder if he sees deeper problems.
        
           | mathgenius wrote:
           | link?
        
             | [deleted]
        
       | wrnr wrote:
       | I always liked this 8 minute explanation of the proof:
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwRl5W-whTs
        
       | denton-scratch wrote:
       | That was a marvellously lucid presentation of the subject. I
       | can't say I understood all of it, but I love to read
       | presentations of difficult subjects expressed clearly in (more or
       | less) plain words. It makes me think I've learned something.
       | 
       | There's a citation in the article to "Gardner, 1984 p. 9-10". But
       | there's no footnote. Would that be the late Martin Gardner,
       | formerly of Mathematical Recreations? He also had a talent for
       | expressing hard subjects clearly, in plain words.
        
         | pvg wrote:
         | The reference is at the bottom of this, author probably forgot
         | to fix it when cutting and pasting from Mathworld (yes, it's
         | the same Gardner)
         | 
         | https://mathworld.wolfram.com/BettiNumber.html
        
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