In my experience the best revenge is usually to live a happy life. If it was me, I'd use the $1M to do that. Even assuming he's completely non-materialistic, I find it hard to imagine there's nothing Perelman could spend the money on that would make him even a little happier.
Even assuming he's completely non-materialistic, I find it hard to imagine there's nothing Perelman could spend the money on that would make him even a little happier
What you're saying makes perfect sense in the context of our (modern Western) attitude to money, but Perelman has always struck me as a throwback to an older conception of these things. He might well regard money -- or at least money obtained in this way -- as intrinsically incompatible with pure intellectual life. If accepting the money would entail losing something that he values more, his refusal is not so strange.
It's also the case that Russian intellectuals are -- or at least used to be -- biased more in this direction than Western ones. Which reminds me of one of the greatest and funniest things ever said on the subject, Saltykov-Shchedrin on the difference between Russia and the West: "A Westerner sells his soul to the devil; a Russian just gives his soul to the devil."
To a mathematician, some things are far more important than mere money. Accepting tribute money from an organisation you believed to be fundamentally corrupt would be to become one of the very people you despise.
To a mathematician, some things are far more important than mere money.
I know, my PhD is in pure mathematics - I've seen up-close that mathematicians can be an odd bunch ;)
Using the money to fund some kind of an alternative to the organisation he believes is corrupt, surely wouldn't make him corrupt though, just to take one example?
That's very true - good point. I wonder what it would actually cost to make this much of a public statement if he spent the money directly that way - maybe it is comparable.
Oh, probably more. How much does human interest cost? This has captured quite a few people's attention, especially considering it's catching people not in mathematics.
I couldn't resist thinking about this a bit more. Something comparable would be firefox's double-page New York Times ad, which apparently cost about $200k (http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/007103.html) and certainly reached a lot of non-mathematicians.
Even though Perelman's action has generated quite a bit of press attention, my gut feeling is he could have paid for even more attention if he chose to use the prize money to raise awareness directly.
That said, if he really wanted to get maximum exposure, he could continue to ignore the prize for almost a year, but accept it at the last minute and then spend it all on ads telling the world how corrupt academic mathematics is ;)
A point that non-mathematicians will never understand! I used to always correct people by saying, "No, you mean arithmetic," until I realized how hopelessly pedantic it was.
Firefox though went from a fairly large amount of people to a fair amount larger amount of people. I'll bet this guy went from 4-digit people knowing (of) him to 7 or more digits.
I'd think generating interest from something minute would be harder than from something a lot of people have at least heard of.
It's not about whether spending the money on something would make him happier or not. It's about whether taking the money would commit him to a social group, or structure, or organization he disagrees with.
Or maybe he just has other things he wants to be doing that don't require that money.
For me that's called being consistent as a man and it's the type of choice that separates men from peons.
So, let's not put a man on trial for refusing a gift. What's wrong with that? It didn't harm anybody I think...
