Grigory Perelman, the heretofore unquestioned genius who solved one of the world's most vexing math problems, has refused a $1 million-dollar prize offered for the accomplishment, according to the very dated-sounding Russian news agency InterFax.Apparently Perelman has a history of declining prestigious awards. In 1996, he refused an award from the European Congress of Mathematicians. In 2006 he rejected the Fields Medal, known as math's Nobel Prize. And just last year, he declined to accept his runaway victory in St. Petersburg's annual Rasputin Look-A-Like Contest.
Perelman actually solved the problem (known as Poincare's Conjecture) in 2006, but the solution is so difficult that the international community of brilliant mathematicians have spent the last four years double-checking Perelman's work. No word as to whether or not the problem will be re-named "Perelman's Bitch."
