Crazy Jew Refuses 1,000,000 Prize

[schrodinger's cat]

You are the world's cleverest man. You have solved one of maths' most intractable problems. Do you a) accept a $1m reward, or b) reject the money, barricade yourself inside your flat and refuse to answer the door? The answer, if you are the reclusive Russian genius Grigory Perelman, is b).

The Clay Mathematics Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, last week honoured Perelman for his solution to a problem posed almost a century ago by French mathematician Henri Poincaré. The theorem – known as Poincaré's conjecture – involves the deep structure of three-dimensional shapes. It is one of seven elusive challenges set by the institute, each carrying a $1m reward. It took the world's leading mathematicians several years to verify that Perelman had definitively solved the problem in a paper published in 2002.

Perelman, however, doesn't want the cash. This latest snub follows his refusal in 2006 to collect the maths equivalent of an Oscar, the Fields Medal. Perelman is currently jobless and lives with his mother and sister in a small flat in St Petersburg. (He has his own spartan one-bedroom flat, allegedly full of cockroaches, but rarely uses it.)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/23/grigory-perelman-rejects-1m-dollars

[Raulmarrio2000]

Perhaps he is not interested in money. But why not accepting it and donating it to a Jewish Charitable org or to Israel?

[Confederate Kahanist]

Perhaps he is not interested in money. But why not accepting it and donating it to a Jewish Charitable org or to Israel?

I know.  Good idea!

[Rubystars]

Maybe he just hates being the center of attention.

[Confederate Kahanist]

He sounds like he has a severe form of aspergers.

[Raulmarrio2000]

I doubt whether Aspergers is a disease or just a personality. I dislike modern psychology when everyone who is different is considered sick.
And this man, as a Jew, should know that his intelligence is not his, but was given to him by H". If he won a prize and has no interest in it he should donate it to the Jewish People, why giving it away back to the non-Jewish Institute?

[TruthSpreader]

He is crazy. He could've helped us.

[White Israelite]

Well that defeats the stereotype that all we care about is money, anyways it's his decision.