THE first in a series of million-dollar prizes for solving mathematics problems has been turned down. Six million-dollar questions remain, but don’t hold your breath for winning claims.
Last week, the (CMI) announced that Grigori Perelman had turned down its award for his proof of the Poincaré conjecture.
The century-old puzzle is one of seven . Its solution was posted by Perelman in a series of papers in 2002 and 2003. “It sort of came out of the blue,” says CMI’s president, Jim Carlson.
No work on the other puzzles has generated such a…
