Poincaré Conjecture May Be Solved

Flamerule writes "The New York Times is now reporting that Dr. Grigori (Grisha) Perelman, of the Steklov Institute of Mathematics of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, appears to have solved the famous Poincaré Conjecture, one of the Clay Institute's million-dollar Millennium Prize problems. I first noticed a short blurb about this at the MathWorld homepage last week, but Google searches have revealed almost nothing but the date and times of some of his lectures this month, including a packed session at MIT (photos), in which he reportedly presented material that proves the Conjecture. More specifically, the relevant material comes from a paper ("The entropy formula for the Ricci flow and its geometric applications") from last November, and a follow-up that was just released last month."

What about the Dunwoody paper?

[Glyndwr]

The link to mathworld.wolfram.com [wolfram.com] from the post says:

In April 2002, M. J. Dunwoody produced a five-page paper that purports to prove the conjecture. However, according to the rules of the Clay Institute, the paper must survive two years of academic scrutiny before the prize can be collected.

So, why the excitment about this later Perelman paper? Has the Dunwoody paper been debunked?

Now THATS Patience...

[drgroove]

"Though his early work has earned him a reputation as a brilliant mathematician, Dr. Perelman spent the last eight years sequestered in Russia, not publishing."

"However, according to the rules of the Clay Institute, the paper must survive two years of academic scrutiny before the prize can be collected."

So, all told, Perelman is going to wait a total of 10 years from the time he started to work on the solution to the Conjecture, to the time where the scientific community lets him know if his answer is correct. Wow.

A packed session at MIT indeed...

[Anonymous Coward]

Y'know - if there's ampty seats, then it can't really be described as packed. I remember the day when people sat on the floor in the aisles to receive words of mathematical wisdom from Dmitri [bath.ac.uk] [www.bath.ac.uk].

Nope.

[mekkab]

Darnit's post [slashdot.org] has it that dunwoody has holes.

Here's to Perelman.

regardless, as the article suggests, even if it doesn't solve the poincare conjecture, the work will hopefully remove anaomalies in Ricci flows. Which is exciting if you are a mathematician and not very interesting at all if you are at a coctail party (unless you are three sheets to the wind, and then the mathematicians around you can talk about the topographic properties of those sheets...)

Re:Donuts, apples, I'm hungry

[Spunk]

In a sense, yes. A woman is topologically equivalent to a torus.