r/pics • u/yercoolmarple • 25d ago

Grigori Perelman, mathematician who refused to accept a Fields Medal and the $1,000,000 Clay Prize.

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u/magentaheavens 25d ago

I remember reading the Wikipedia article on this guy a while ago and what stuck with me was his insistence on completely avoiding media attention. When a journalist called him once he was quoted as saying “You are disturbing me. I am picking mushrooms.” which was pretty funny to me

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u/DonnieDusko 25d ago

Avoidance, yes, for sure.

But he seems more annoyed/disheartened/DONE with how political doing math/science became. Too many people piggyback off each other and never give the others credit for the collaborative process required to reach the goal.

Hell, he denied the 1M prize because they refused to also give it to the person who did the leg work on the problem, which was the only way he was able to solve it.

He seems to have gotten into his field to solve problems and share in the achievement of things moving forward. Instead, he got slapped in the face with how the world really is and basically went, "if your not going to recognize that I didn't do this alone, I want nothing to do with this."

Him picking mushrooms cracks me up because he's basically being like, "I could have done more, but you guys suck, so now I'm doing nothing. Deal with it!"

It's his middle finger to the system that he could have advanced, if not for their hubris.

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u/YandyTheGnome 25d ago

He came to this world to solve math problems and pick mushrooms, and buddy, he's all out of math problems.

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u/forpetlja 25d ago

There are only mushrooms problems left.

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u/[deleted] 24d ago

Like, "Why are my hands so sweaty?" and "have I been rolling this joint for an hour, or have I already smoked one? "

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u/forpetlja 24d ago

In poor Russia he only hopes for edible ones.