Grigori Perelman, a Russian mathematician, born in 1966, was awarded the Fields Medal (a version of a Nobel Prize in mathematics),.in 2006. In 2010 he was awarded the million dollar Clay Millennium Prize.
This was something that had never happened before, and made quite a stir in the mathematical community and in the media. Perelman did not talk a lot about the reasons for his refusals, but an article published in The New Yorker by Sylvie Nasar, who wrote also “A beautiful mind”, the biography of John Nash - reveals part of the mystery. In private interviews Grigori Perelman said:
“It is not people who break ethical standards who are regarded as aliens,” he said. “It is people like me who are isolated.”
Then, when asked about his colleagues, mathematicians, who were fighting for priority, he added:
I can’t say I’m outraged. Other people do worse. Of course, there are many mathematicians who are more or less honest. But almost all of them are conformists. They are more or less honest, but they tolerate those who are not honest.
“Almost of all them are conformists” – this observation made by Grigori Perelman, the iconoclast mathematician, applies not only to mathematics. It applies to all areas of Science, and not only Science. Edmund Burke, a 19-th century Irish statesman and philosopher wrote in his essay “Thought on the cause of the present discontent”:
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
The above is often rephrased as:
All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.
The point is, I think, that good men all too often are conformists – they just do nothing, since doing something would disturb their comfortable lives. That doing nothing helps evil to prevail, that doing nothing ruins the lives of other people – that thought does not occur to many of them. And, as far as I can see, scientists are no better here than the rest of society. In fact, because science is used as a means to power by politicians, it may actually be a more concentrated sample than the lay-public.
Grigori Perelman, disappointed with the pitiful behavior of the scientific community, withdrew from doing science completely.
