Russian may have solved great math mystery

[La_Serpiente]

Russian may have solved great math mystery



SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- A publicity-shy Russian researcher who labors in near-seclusion may have solved one of mathematics' oldest and most abstruse problems, the Poincare Conjecture.

Evidence has been mounting since November 2002 that Grigori "Grisha" Perelman has cracked the 100-year-old problem, which seeks to explain the geometry of three-dimensional space.

If Perelman succeeded, he could be eligible for a $1 million prize offered by the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Clay Mathematics Institute, formed to identify the world's seven toughest math problems.

Mathematicians around the world have been checking Perelman's work in search of the kind of flaws that have sunk the many other supposed solutions to a problem first presented by the French mathematician Henri Poincare in 1904.

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Russian may have solved great math mystery

[unblock]

1. link to official definition of poincare conjecture:

www.claymath.org/Millennium_Prize_Problems/Poincare_Conjecture/

[papau]

2. great Post - thanks!

:-)

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

3. How about a 2,500 year old problem?

As a boost, this one is understandable by people other than raving madmen:

A Perfect Number equals the sum of all its divisors: 28 = 14 + 7 + 4 + 2 + 1

An Almost Perfect Number equals the sum of all its divisors plus 1: 8 = (4 + 2 + 1) + 1

A Quasiperfect Number equals the sum of all its divisors minus 1.

Pythagoras wondered whether there was any quasiperfect number. He couldn't find one, nor could he prove there aren't any.

Take that, Fermat.