A Brilliant Article about a Mathematician. Really.

The August 28 issue of The New Yorker contains one of the best articles I’ve read in a long time. It’s about a juicy topic, but it lacks a lot of the political bias that permeates many New Yorker pieces. It features a reclusive, dare I say Roark-ian protagonist, a Lear-like authority figure concerned about betrayal by his protégés and recognition of his pre-eminence in his field, and an undercurrent of suspense that keeps your reading until its denouement. And it is, of course, about math. The only thing The New Yorker gets a poor grade on is its artwork, as the illustration of Grigory Perelman looks nothing like the photo that appeared in The New York Times in last Sunday’s Week in Review.

What I like most about the article is the way its authors, Sylvia Nasar and David Gruber, simplified such a complex subject. In good writing, there is no substitute for knowledge. Nasar and Gruber know mathematics as well as they know their reader; as a result, I was actually interested in a story about Poincare’s Conjecture.

Here’s the story: Perelman, a Russian opera aficionado who did his post-graduate work in the United States, solved a mathematics problem – the Poincare Conjecture – that had a million dollar bounty on its head. His style in solving it – a 68 page paper, as opposed to the many hundred page explications of Perelman’s assertions penned by other influential mathematicians – is emblematic of his style of living. He lacks the competitive fire characteristic of many academics. That he solves this long-standing problem and then retires to the balcony of a St. Petersburg opera house to listen to music reminds me of the Roman dictator Cincinnatus in terms of an egoless duty to the task. (I suppose I can’t really sustain a “Roark-ian” description of Perelman if I later characterize him as egoless.) By contrast, Shing-Tung Yau, the patriarch in this drama, seems to need recognition related to any discovery or new idea set forth by those he has mentored. Yet Yau is an intriguing character. Nasar and Gruber allow him to be at times worthy of sympathy, and at others worthy of scolding.

The story has the magnitude necessary for drama. One institute has offered a million dollar prize for the scholar who could prove the conjecture. The leading international mathematics body wants to give Perelman its highest honor, the Fields Medal, for the outstanding mathematician under age 40. Perelman’s achievement has on the one hand the potential to shine a spotlight on many others who have a facility for finding spotlights (in sports, they’re called bandwagon fans), and on the other hand the potential to shut down an entire field of mathematics which has been dedicated to Poincare’s Conjecture.

There’s more I could say, but it’s past my bedtime. Read the article. It’s better than very good.