有关丘成桐教授的报导
下面英文的完整译文见30、31楼。是否准确，请达人来分析吧。呵呵。8越30日更新。http://www.wangf.net/vbb/showthread.php?s=80d58dfb1f4b5ed9a14cc4277e876121&threadid=22278
云中君
丘成桐先生严厉批评大陆学术风气的报导在华人世界可谓甚嚣尘上。当然大陆目前的学风的确很有问题，所以很多人只要一看这样的批评便鼓掌称快，我自己原本也倾向于此。但是我最近从三个完全不同的渠道听到对丘先生议论的背景的评价。这三个不同的渠道对丘先生都有非常负面的评价。所以使我开始觉得我们对任何事都不能臆断。果不其然，这最新一期的《纽约客》（New Yorker），登了一很长的有关庞加莱猜想被解决的报导，作者不是别人，正是当年写纳什传记的Sylvia Nasar，她现在是普大新闻系的讲座教授，也是目前美国有关科学方面的报告文学最受尊敬的作家之一。她的这篇文章中有不少关于丘成桐先生的报导。涉及各种方面，尤其是丘先生对田刚等人的批评的背景等等。她引述了美国数学界不少重要的数学家的看法，对丘先生的动机和学霸作风有很负面的批评，这基本印证了我前些时候所听到的个人意见。全文很长，我没有可能去翻译，但其中对丘先生的最致命的一句评价就是：
Many mathematicians view Yau’s conduct over the Poincaré as a violation of this basic ethic, and worry about the damage it has caused the profession.
（许多数学家认为丘在庞加莱猜想上的所做所为违反了科学研究上的这种基本伦理，他们为这种做法对这个领域所造成的伤害而感到忧虑。）
这种基本伦理特指数学研究上的合作精神和不埋没他人成绩的伦理。西方的评论家，尤其像Nasar 这样身份的人一般在批评科学界名人时用词会比较含蓄。而上面的那句评价基本上就是负面评价的极限了。相对之下，Nasar 的文字高度赞扬了为解决庞加莱猜想的证明工作作出了真正关键成绩而又拒绝领菲而兹奖的俄国数学家Perelmen 。我现在将英文全文转载如下。以供各位参考。
MANIFOLD DESTINY
by SYLVIA NASAR AND DAVID GRUBER
A legendary problem and the battle over who solved it.
Issue of 2006-08-28
Posted 2006-08-21
On the evening of June 20th, several hundred physicists, including a Nobel laureate, assembled in an auditorium at the Friendship Hotel i Beijing for a lecture by the Chinese mathematician Shing-Tung Yau. In the late nineteen-seventies, when Yau was in his twenties, he ha made a series of breakthroughs that helped launch the string-theory revolution in physics and earned him, in addition to a Fields Medal—th most coveted award in mathematics—a reputation in both disciplines as a thinker of unrivalled technical power
Yau had since become a professor of mathematics at Harvard and the director of mathematics institutes in Beijing and Hong Kong, dividing his time between the United States and China. His lecture at the Friendship Hotel was part of an international conference on string theory, which he had organized with the support of the Chinese government, in part to promote the country’s recent advances in theoretical physics. (More than six thousand students attended the keynote address, which was delivered by Yau’s close friend Stephen Hawking, in the Great Hall of the People.) The subject of Yau’s talk was something that few in his audience knew much about: the Poincaré conjecture, a century-old conundrum about the characteristics of three-dimensional spheres, which, because it has important implications for mathematics and cosmology and because it has eluded all attempts at solution, is regarded by mathematicians as a holy grail.
Yau, a stocky man of fifty-seven, stood at a lectern in shirtsleeves and black-rimmed glasses and, with his hands in his pockets, described how two of his students, Xi-Ping Zhu and Huai-Dong Cao, had completed a proof of the Poincaré conjecture a few weeks earlier. “I’m very positive about Zhu and Cao’s work,” Yau said. “Chinese mathematicians should have every reason to be proud of such a big success in completely solving the puzzle.” He said that Zhu and Cao were indebted to his longtime American collaborator Richard Hamilton, who deserved most of the credit for solving the Poincaré. He also mentioned Grigory Perelman, a Russian mathematician who, he acknowledged, had made an important contribution. Nevertheless, Yau said, “in Perelman’s work, spectacular as it is, many key ideas of the proofs are sketched or outlined, and complete details are often missing.” He added, “We would like to get Perelman to make comments. But Perelman resides in St. Petersburg and refuses to communicate with other people.”
For ninety minutes, Yau discussed some of the technical details of his students’ proof. When he was finished, no one asked any questions. That night, however, a Brazilian physicist posted a report of the lecture on his blog. “Looks like China soon will take the lead also in mathematics,” he wrote.
Grigory Perelman is indeed reclusive. He left his job as a researcher at the Steklov Institute of Mathematics, in St. Petersburg, las December; he has few friends; and he lives with his mother in an apartment on the outskirts of the city. Although he had never granted a interview before, he was cordial and frank when we visited him, in late June, shortly after Yau’s conference in Beijing, taking us on a lon walking tour of the city. “I’m looking for some friends, and they don’t have to be mathematicians,” he said. The week before the conference Perelman had spent hours discussing the Poincaré conjecture with Sir John M. Ball, the fifty-eight-year-old president of the Internationa Mathematical Union, the discipline’s influential professional association. The meeting, which took place at a conference center in a statel mansion overlooking the Neva River, was highly unusual. At the end of May, a committee of nine prominent mathematicians had voted t award Perelman a Fields Medal for his work on the Poincaré, and Ball had gone to St. Petersburg to persuade him to accept the prize in public ceremony at the I.M.U.’s quadrennial congress, in Madrid, on August 22nd
The Fields Medal, like the Nobel Prize, grew, in part, out of a desire to elevate science above national animosities. German mathematicians were excluded from the first I.M.U. congress, in 1924, and, though the ban was lifted before the next one, the trauma it caused led, in 1936, to the establishment of the Fields, a prize intended to be “as purely international and impersonal as possible.”
However, the Fields Medal, which is awarded every four years, to between two and four mathematicians, is supposed not only to reward past achievements but also to stimulate future research; for this reason, it is given only to mathematicians aged forty and younger. In recent decades, as the number of professional mathematicians has grown, the Fields Medal has become increasingly prestigious. Only forty-four medals have been awarded in nearly seventy years—including three for work closely related to the Poincaré conjecture—and no mathematician has ever refused the prize. Nevertheless, Perelman told Ball that he had no intention of accepting it. “I refuse,” he said simply.
Over a period of eight months, beginning in November, 2002, Perelman posted a proof of the Poincaré on the Internet in three installments. Like a sonnet or an aria, a mathematical proof has a distinct form and set of conventions. It begins with axioms, or accepted truths, and employs a series of logical statements to arrive at a conclusion. If the logic is deemed to be watertight, then the result is a theorem. Unlike proof in law or science, which is based on evidence and therefore subject to qualification and revision, a proof of a theorem is definitive. Judgments about the accuracy of a proof are mediated by peer-reviewed journals; to insure fairness, reviewers are supposed to be carefully chosen by journal editors, and the identity of a scholar whose pa-per is under consideration is kept secret. Publication implies that a proof is complete, correct, and original.
By these standards, Perelman’s proof was unorthodox. It was astonishingly brief for such an ambitious piece of work; logic sequences that could have been elaborated over many pages were often severely compressed. Moreover, the proof made no direct mention of the Poincaré and included many elegant results that were irrelevant to the central argument. But, four years later, at least two teams of experts had vetted the proof and had found no significant gaps or errors in it. A consensus was emerging in the math community: Perelman had solved the Poincaré. Even so, the proof’s complexity—and Perelman’s use of shorthand in making some of his most important claims—made it vulnerable to challenge. Few mathematicians had the expertise necessary to evaluate and defend it.
After giving a series of lectures on the proof in the United States in 2003, Perelman returned to St. Petersburg. Since then, although he had continued to answer queries about it by e-mail, he had had minimal contact with colleagues and, for reasons no one understood, had not tried to publish it. Still, there was little doubt that Perelman, who turned forty on June 13th, deserved a Fields Medal. As Ball planned the I.M.U.’s 2006 congress, he began to conceive of it as a historic event. More than three thousand mathematicians would be attending, and King Juan Carlos of Spain had agreed to preside over the awards ceremony. The I.M.U.’s newsletter predicted that the congress would be remembered as “the occasion when this conjecture became a theorem.” Ball, determined to make sure that Perelman would be there, decided to go to St. Petersburg.
Ball wanted to keep his visit a secret—the names of Fields Medal recipients are announced officially at the awards ceremony—and the conference center where he met with Perelman was deserted. For ten hours over two days, he tried to persuade Perelman to agree to accept the prize. Perelman, a slender, balding man with a curly beard, bushy eyebrows, and blue-green eyes, listened politely. He had not spoken English for three years, but he fluently parried Ball’s entreaties, at one point taking Ball on a long walk—one of Perelman’s favorite activities. As he summed up the conversation two weeks later: “He proposed to me three alternatives: accept and come; accept and don’t come, and we will send you the medal later; third, I don’t accept the prize. From the very beginning, I told him I have chosen the third one.” The Fields Medal held no interest for him, Perelman explained. “It was completely irrelevant for me,” he said. “Everybody understood that if the proof is correct then no other recognition is needed.”
Proofs of the Poincaré have been announced nearly every year since the conjecture was formulated, by Henri Poincaré, more than hundred years ago. Poincaré was a cousin of Raymond Poincaré, the President of France during the First World War, and one of the mos creative mathematicians of the nineteenth century. Slight, myopic, and notoriously absent-minded, he conceived his famous problem in 1904 eight years before he died, and tucked it as an offhand question into the end of a sixty-five-page paper
Poincaré didn’t make much progress on proving the conjecture. “Cette question nous entra?nerait trop loin” (“This question would take us too far”), he wrote. He was a founder of topology, also known as “rubber-sheet geometry,” for its focus on the intrinsic properties of spaces. From a topologist’s perspective, there is no difference between a bagel and a coffee cup with a handle. Each has a single hole and can be manipulated to resemble the other without being torn or cut. Poincaré used the term “manifold” to describe such an abstract topological space. The simplest possible two-dimensional manifold is the surface of a soccer ball, which, to a topologist, is a sphere—even when it is stomped on, stretched, or crumpled. The proof that an object is a so-called two-sphere, since it can take on any number of shapes, is that it is “simply connected,” meaning that no holes puncture it. Unlike a soccer ball, a bagel is not a true sphere. If you tie a slipknot around a soccer ball, you can easily pull the slipknot closed by sliding it along the surface of the ball. But if you tie a slipknot around a bagel through the hole in its middle you cannot pull the slipknot closed without tearing the bagel.
Two-dimensional manifolds were well understood by the mid-nineteenth century. But it remained unclear whether what was true for two dimensions was also true for three. Poincaré proposed that all closed, simply connected, three-dimensional manifolds—those which lack holes and are of finite extent—were spheres. The conjecture was potentially important for scientists studying the largest known three-dimensional manifold: the universe. Proving it mathematically, however, was far from easy. Most attempts were merely embarrassing, but some led to important mathematical discoveries, including proofs of Dehn’s Lemma, the Sphere Theorem, and the Loop Theorem, which are now fundamental concepts in topology.
By the nineteen-sixties, topology had become one of the most productive areas of mathematics, and young topologists were launching regular attacks on the Poincaré. To the astonishment of most mathematicians, it turned out that manifolds of the fourth, fifth, and higher dimensions were more tractable than those of the third dimension. By 1982, Poincaré’s conjecture had been proved in all dimensions except the third. In 2000, the Clay Mathematics Institute, a private foundation that promotes mathematical research, named the Poincaré one of the seven most important outstanding problems in mathematics and offered a million dollars to anyone who could prove it.
“My whole life as a mathematician has been dominated by the Poincaré conjecture,” John Morgan, the head of the mathematics department at Columbia University, said. “I never thought I’d see a solution. I thought nobody could touch it.”
Grigory Perelman did not plan to become a mathematician. “There was never a decision point,” he said when we met. We were outside th apartment building where he lives, in Kupchino, a neighborhood of drab high-rises. Perelman’s father, who was an electrical engineer encouraged his interest in math. “He gave me logical and other math problems to think about,” Perelman said. “He got a lot of books for m to read. He taught me how to play chess. He was proud of me.” Among the books his father gave him was a copy of “Physics fo Entertainment,” which had been a best-seller in the Soviet Union in the nineteen-thirties. In the foreword, the book’s author describes th contents as “conundrums, brain-teasers, entertaining anecdotes, and unexpected comparisons,” adding, “I have quoted extensively from Jule Verne, H. G. Wells, Mark Twain and other writers, because, besides providing entertainment, the fantastic experiments these writers describ may well serve as instructive illustrations at physics classes.” The book’s topics included how to jump from a moving car, and why, “according to the law of buoyancy, we would never drown in the Dead Sea.
The notion that Russian society considered worthwhile what Perelman did for pleasure came as a surprise. By the time he was fourteen, he was the star performer of a local math club. In 1982, the year that Shing-Tung Yau won a Fields Medal, Perelman earned a perfect score and the gold medal at the International Mathematical Olympiad, in Budapest. He was friendly with his teammates but not close—“I had no close friends,” he said. He was one of two or three Jews in his grade, and he had a passion for opera, which also set him apart from his peers. His mother, a math teacher at a technical college, played the violin and began taking him to the opera when he was six. By the time Perelman was fifteen, he was spending his pocket money on records. He was thrilled to own a recording of a famous 1946 performance of “La Traviata,” featuring Licia Albanese as Violetta. “Her voice was very good,” he said.
At Leningrad University, which Perelman entered in 1982, at the age of sixteen, he took advanced classes in geometry and solved a problem posed by Yuri Burago, a mathematician at the Steklov Institute, who later became his Ph.D. adviser. “There are a lot of students of high ability who speak before thinking,” Burago said. “Grisha was different. He thought deeply. His answers were always correct. He always checked very, very carefully.” Burago added, “He was not fast. Speed means nothing. Math doesn’t depend on speed. It is about deep.”
At the Steklov in the early nineties, Perelman became an expert on the geometry of Riemannian and Alexandrov spaces—extensions of traditional Euclidean geometry—and began to publish articles in the leading Russian and American mathematics journals. In 1992, Perelman was invited to spend a semester each at New York University and Stony Brook University. By the time he left for the United States, that fall, the Russian economy had collapsed. Dan Stroock, a mathematician at M.I.T., recalls smuggling wads of dollars into the country to deliver to a retired mathematician at the Steklov, who, like many of his colleagues, had become destitute.
Perelman was pleased to be in the United States, the capital of the international mathematics community. He wore the same brown corduroy jacket every day and told friends at N.Y.U. that he lived on a diet of bread, cheese, and milk. He liked to walk to Brooklyn, where he had relatives and could buy traditional Russian brown bread. Some of his colleagues were taken aback by his fingernails, which were several inches long. “If they grow, why wouldn’t I let them grow?” he would say when someone asked why he didn’t cut them. Once a week, he and a young Chinese mathematician named Gang Tian drove to Princeton, to attend a seminar at the Institute for Advanced Study.
For several decades, the institute and nearby Princeton University had been centers of topological research. In the late seventies, William Thurston, a Princeton mathematician who liked to test out his ideas using scissors and construction paper, proposed a taxonomy for classifying manifolds of three dimensions. He argued that, while the manifolds could be made to take on many different shapes, they nonetheless had a “preferred” geometry, just as a piece of silk draped over a dressmaker’s mannequin takes on the mannequin’s form.
Thurston proposed that every three-dimensional manifold could be broken down into one or more of eight types of component, including a spherical type. Thurston’s theory—which became known as the geometrization conjecture—describes all possible three-dimensional manifolds and is thus a powerful generalization of the Poincaré. If it was confirmed, then Poincaré’s conjecture would be, too. Proving Thurston and Poincaré “definitely swings open doors,” Barry Mazur, a mathematician at Harvard, said. The implications of the conjectures for other disciplines may not be apparent for years, but for mathematicians the problems are fundamental. “This is a kind of twentieth-century Pythagorean theorem,” Mazur added. “It changes the landscape.”
In 1982, Thurston won a Fields Medal for his contributions to topology. That year, Richard Hamilton, a mathematician at Cornell, published a paper on an equation called the Ricci flow, which he suspected could be relevant for solving Thurston’s conjecture and thus the Poincaré. Like a heat equation, which describes how heat distributes itself evenly through a substance—flowing from hotter to cooler parts of a metal sheet, for example—to create a more uniform temperature, the Ricci flow, by smoothing out irregularities, gives manifolds a more uniform geometry.
Hamilton, the son of a Cincinnati doctor, defied the math profession’s nerdy stereotype. Brash and irreverent, he rode horses, windsurfed, and had a succession of girlfriends. He treated math as merely one of life’s pleasures. At forty-nine, he was considered a brilliant lecturer, but he had published relatively little beyond a series of seminal articles on the Ricci flow, and he had few graduate students. Perelman had read Hamilton’s papers and went to hear him give a talk at the Institute for Advanced Study. Afterward, Perelman shyly spoke to him.
“I really wanted to ask him something,” Perelman recalled. “He was smiling, and he was quite patient. He actually told me a couple of things that he published a few years later. He did not hesitate to tell me. Hamilton’s openness and generosity—it really attracted me. I can’t say that most mathematicians act like that.
“I was working on different things, though occasionally I would think about the Ricci flow,” Perelman added. “You didn’t have to be a great mathematician to see that this would be useful for geometrization. I felt I didn’t know very much. I kept asking questions.”
Shing-Tung Yau was also asking Hamilton questions about the Ricci flow. Yau and Hamilton had met in the seventies, and had becom close, despite considerable differences in temperament and background. A mathematician at the University of California at San Diego wh knows both men called them “the mathematical loves of each other’s lives.
Yau’s family moved to Hong Kong from mainland China in 1949, when he was five months old, along with hundreds of thousands of other refugees fleeing Mao’s armies. The previous year, his father, a relief worker for the United Nations, had lost most of the family’s savings in a series of failed ventures. In Hong Kong, to support his wife and eight children, he tutored college students in classical Chinese literature and philosophy.
When Yau was fourteen, his father died of kidney cancer, leaving his mother dependent on handouts from Christian missionaries and whatever small sums she earned from selling handicrafts. Until then, Yau had been an indifferent student. But he began to devote himself to schoolwork, tutoring other students in math to make money. “Part of the thing that drives Yau is that he sees his own life as being his father’s revenge,” said Dan Stroock, the M.I.T. mathematician, who has known Yau for twenty years. “Yau’s father was like the Talmudist whose children are starving.”
Yau studied math at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he attracted the attention of Shiing-Shen Chern, the pre?minent Chinese mathematician, who helped him win a scholarship to the University of California at Berkeley. Chern was the author of a famous theorem combining topology and geometry. He spent most of his career in the United States, at Berkeley. He made frequent visits to Hong Kong, Taiwan, and, later, China, where he was a revered symbol of Chinese intellectual achievement, to promote the study of math and science.
In 1969, Yau started graduate school at Berkeley, enrolling in seven graduate courses each term and auditing several others. He sent half of his scholarship money back to his mother in China and impressed his professors with his tenacity. He was obliged to share credit for his first major result when he learned that two other mathematicians were working on the same problem. In 1976, he proved a twenty-year-old conjecture pertaining to a type of manifold that is now crucial to string theory. A French mathematician had formulated a proof of the problem, which is known as Calabi’s conjecture, but Yau’s, because it was more general, was more powerful. (Physicists now refer to Calabi-Yau manifolds.) “He was not so much thinking up some original way of looking at a subject but solving extremely hard technical problems that at the time only he could solve, by sheer intellect and force of will,” Phillip Griffiths, a geometer and a former director of the Institute for Advanced Study, said.
In 1980, when Yau was thirty, he became one of the youngest mathematicians ever to be appointed to the permanent faculty of the Institute for Advanced Study, and he began to attract talented students. He won a Fields Medal two years later, the first Chinese ever to do so. By this time, Chern was seventy years old and on the verge of retirement. According to a relative of Chern’s, “Yau decided that he was going to be the next famous Chinese mathematician and that it was time for Chern to step down.”
Harvard had been trying to recruit Yau, and when, in 1983, it was about to make him a second offer Phillip Griffiths told the dean of faculty a version of a story from “The Romance of the Three Kingdoms,” a Chinese classic. In the third century A.D., a Chinese warlord dreamed of creating an empire, but the most brilliant general in China was working for a rival. Three times, the warlord went to his enemy’s kingdom to seek out the general. Impressed, the general agreed to join him, and together they succeeded in founding a dynasty. Taking the hint, the dean flew to Philadelphia, where Yau lived at the time, to make him an offer. Even so, Yau turned down the job. Finally, in 1987, he agreed to go to Harvard.
Yau’s entrepreneurial drive extended to collaborations with colleagues and students, and, in addition to conducting his own research, he began organizing seminars. He frequently allied himself with brilliantly inventive mathematicians, including Richard Schoen and William Meeks. But Yau was especially impressed by Hamilton, as much for his swagger as for his imagination. “I can have fun with Hamilton,” Yau told us during the string-theory conference in Beijing. “I can go swimming with him. I go out with him and his girlfriends and all that.” Yau was convinced that Hamilton could use the Ricci-flow equation to solve the Poincaré and Thurston conjectures, and he urged him to focus on the problems. “Meeting Yau changed his mathematical life,” a friend of both mathematicians said of Hamilton. “This was the first time he had been on to something extremely big. Talking to Yau gave him courage and direction.”
Yau believed that if he could help solve the Poincaré it would be a victory not just for him but also for China. In the mid-nineties, Yau and several other Chinese scholars began meeting with President Jiang Zemin to discuss how to rebuild the country’s scientific institutions, which had been largely destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. Chinese universities were in dire condition. According to Steve Smale, who won a Fields for proving the Poincaré in higher dimensions, and who, after retiring from Berkeley, taught in Hong Kong, Peking University had “halls filled with the smell of urine, one common room, one office for all the assistant professors,” and paid its faculty wretchedly low salaries. Yau persuaded a Hong Kong real-estate mogul to help finance a mathematics institute at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Beijing, and to endow a Fields-style medal for Chinese mathematicians under the age of forty-five. On his trips to China, Yau touted Hamilton and their joint work on the Ricci flow and the Poincaré as a model for young Chinese mathematicians. As he put it in Beijing, “They always say that the whole country should learn from Mao or some big heroes. So I made a joke to them, but I was half serious. I said the whole country should learn from Hamilton.”
Grigory Perelman was learning from Hamilton already. In 1993, he began a two-year fellowship at Berkeley. While he was there, Hamilto gave several talks on campus, and in one he mentioned that he was working on the Poincaré. Hamilton’s Ricci-flow strategy was extremel technical and tricky to execute. After one of his talks at Berkeley, he told Perelman about his biggest obstacle. As a space is smoothed unde the Ricci flow, some regions deform into what mathematicians refer to as “singularities.” Some regions, called “necks,” become attenuate areas of infinite density. More troubling to Hamilton was a kind of singularity he called the “cigar.” If cigars formed, Hamilton worried, i might be impossible to achieve uniform geometry. Perelman realized that a paper he had written on Alexandrov spaces might help Hamilto prove Thurston’s conjecture—and the Poincaré—once Hamilton solved the cigar problem. “At some point, I asked Hamilton if he knew certain collapsing result that I had proved but not published—which turned out to be very useful,” Perelman said. “Later, I realized that h didn’t understand what I was talking about.” Dan Stroock, of M.I.T., said, “Perelman may have learned stuff from Yau and Hamilton, but, a the time, they were not learning from him.
By the end of his first year at Berkeley, Perelman had written several strikingly original papers. He was asked to give a lecture at the 1994 I.M.U. congress, in Zurich, and invited to apply for jobs at Stanford, Princeton, the Institute for Advanced Study, and the University of Tel Aviv. Like Yau, Perelman was a formidable problem solver. Instead of spending years constructing an intricate theoretical framework, or defining new areas of research, he focussed on obtaining particular results. According to Mikhail Gromov, a renowned Russian geometer who has collaborated with Perelman, he had been trying to overcome a technical difficulty relating to Alexandrov spaces and had apparently been stumped. “He couldn’t do it,” Gromov said. “It was hopeless.”
Perelman told us that he liked to work on several problems at once. At Berkeley, however, he found himself returning again and again to Hamilton’s Ricci-flow equation and the problem that Hamilton thought he could solve with it. Some of Perelman’s friends noticed that he was becoming more and more ascetic. Visitors from St. Petersburg who stayed in his apartment were struck by how sparsely furnished it was. Others worried that he seemed to want to reduce life to a set of rigid axioms. When a member of a hiring committee at Stanford asked him for a C.V. to include with requests for letters of recommendation, Perelman balked. “If they know my work, they don’t need my C.V.,” he said. “If they need my C.V., they don’t know my work.”
Ultimately, he received several job offers. But he declined them all, and in the summer of 1995 returned to St. Petersburg, to his old job at the Steklov Institute, where he was paid less than a hundred dollars a month. (He told a friend that he had saved enough money in the United States to live on for the rest of his life.) His father had moved to Israel two years earlier, and his younger sister was planning to join him there after she finished college. His mother, however, had decided to remain in St. Petersburg, and Perelman moved in with her. “I realize that in Russia I work better,” he told colleagues at the Steklov.
At twenty-nine, Perelman was firmly established as a mathematician and yet largely unburdened by professional responsibilities. He was free to pursue whatever problems he wanted to, and he knew that his work, should he choose to publish it, would be shown serious consideration. Yakov Eliashberg, a mathematician at Stanford who knew Perelman at Berkeley, thinks that Perelman returned to Russia in order to work on the Poincaré. “Why not?” Perelman said when we asked whether Eliashberg’s hunch was correct.
The Internet made it possible for Perelman to work alone while continuing to tap a common pool of knowledge. Perelman searched Hamilton’s papers for clues to his thinking and gave several seminars on his work. “He didn’t need any help,” Gromov said. “He likes to be alone. He reminds me of Newton—this obsession with an idea, working by yourself, the disregard for other people’s opinion. Newton was more obnoxious. Perelman is nicer, but very obsessed.”
In 1995, Hamilton published a paper in which he discussed a few of his ideas for completing a proof of the Poincaré. Reading the paper, Perelman realized that Hamilton had made no progress on overcoming his obstacles—the necks and the cigars. “I hadn’t seen any evidence of progress after early 1992,” Perelman told us. “Maybe he got stuck even earlier.” However, Perelman thought he saw a way around the impasse. In 1996, he wrote Hamilton a long letter outlining his notion, in the hope of collaborating. “He did not answer,” Perelman said. “So I decided to work alone.” Yau had no idea that Hamilton’s work on the Poincaré had stalled. He was increasingly anxious about his own standing in the mathematic profession, particularly in China, where, he worried, a younger scholar could try to supplant him as Chern’s heir. More than a decade ha passed since Yau had proved his last major result, though he continued to publish prolifically. “Yau wants to be the king of geometry, Michael Anderson, a geometer at Stony Brook, said. “He believes that everything should issue from him, that he should have oversight. H doesn’t like people encroaching on his territory.” Determined to retain control over his field, Yau pushed his students to tackle big problems At Harvard, he ran a notoriously tough seminar on differential geometry, which met for three hours at a time three times a week. Each studen was assigned a recently published proof and asked to reconstruct it, fixing any errors and filling in gaps. Yau believed that a mathematicia has an obligation to be explicit, and impressed on his students the importance of step-by-step rigor
There are two ways to get credit for an original contribution in mathematics. The first is to produce an original proof. The second is to identify a significant gap in someone else’s proof and supply the missing chunk. However, only true mathematical gaps—missing or mistaken arguments—can be the basis for a claim of originality. Filling in gaps in exposition—shortcuts and abbreviations used to make a proof more efficient—does not count. When, in 1993, Andrew Wiles revealed that a gap had been found in his proof of Fermat’s last theorem, the problem became fair game for anyone, until, the following year, Wiles fixed the error. Most mathematicians would agree that, by contrast, if a proof’s implicit steps can be made explicit by an expert, then the gap is merely one of exposition, and the proof should be considered complete and correct.
Occasionally, the difference between a mathematical gap and a gap in exposition can be hard to discern. On at least one occasion, Yau and his students have seemed to confuse the two, making claims of originality that other mathematicians believe are unwarranted. In 1996, a young geometer at Berkeley named Alexander Givental had proved a mathematical conjecture about mirror symmetry, a concept that is fundamental to string theory. Though other mathematicians found Givental’s proof hard to follow, they were optimistic that he had solved the problem. As one geometer put it, “Nobody at the time said it was incomplete and incorrect.”
In the fall of 1997, Kefeng Liu, a former student of Yau’s who taught at Stanford, gave a talk at Harvard on mirror symmetry. According to two geometers in the audience, Liu proceeded to present a proof strikingly similar to Givental’s, describing it as a paper that he had co-authored with Yau and another student of Yau’s. “Liu mentioned Givental but only as one of a long list of people who had contributed to the field,” one of the geometers said. (Liu maintains that his proof was significantly different from Givental’s.)
Around the same time, Givental received an e-mail signed by Yau and his collaborators, explaining that they had found his arguments impossible to follow and his notation baffling, and had come up with a proof of their own. They praised Givental for his “brilliant idea” and wrote, “In the final version of our paper your important contribution will be acknowledged.”
A few weeks later, the paper, “Mirror Principle I,” appeared in the Asian Journal of Mathematics, which is co-edited by Yau. In it, Yau and his coauthors describe their result as “the first complete proof” of the mirror conjecture. They mention Givental’s work only in passing. “Unfortunately,” they write, his proof, “which has been read by many prominent experts, is incomplete.” However, they did not identify a specific mathematical gap.
Givental was taken aback. “I wanted to know what their objection was,” he told us. “Not to expose them or defend myself.” In March, 1998, he published a paper that included a three-page footnote in which he pointed out a number of similarities between Yau’s proof and his own. Several months later, a young mathematician at the University of Chicago who was asked by senior colleagues to investigate the dispute concluded that Givental’s proof was complete. Yau says that he had been working on the proof for years with his students and that they achieved their result independently of Givental. “We had our own ideas, and we wrote them up,” he says.
Around this time, Yau had his first serious conflict with Chern and the Chinese mathematical establishment. For years, Chern had been hoping to bring the I.M.U.’s congress to Beijing. According to several mathematicians who were active in the I.M.U. at the time, Yau made an eleventh-hour effort to have the congress take place in Hong Kong instead. But he failed to persuade a sufficient number of colleagues to go along with his proposal, and the I.M.U. ultimately decided to hold the 2002 congress in Beijing. (Yau denies that he tried to bring the congress to Hong Kong.) Among the delegates the I.M.U. appointed to a group that would be choosing speakers for the congress was Yau’s most successful student, Gang Tian, who had been at N.Y.U. with Perelman and was now a professor at M.I.T. The host committee in Beijing also asked Tian to give a plenary address.
Yau was caught by surprise. In March, 2000, he had published a survey of recent research in his field studded with glowing references to Tian and to their joint projects. He retaliated by organizing his first conference on string theory, which opened in Beijing a few days before the math congress began, in late August, 2002. He persuaded Stephen Hawking and several Nobel laureates to attend, and for days the Chinese newspapers were full of pictures of famous scientists. Yau even managed to arrange for his group to have an audience with Jiang Zemin. A mathematician who helped organize the math congress recalls that along the highway between Beijing and the airport there were “billboards with pictures of Stephen Hawking plastered everywhere.”
That summer, Yau wasn’t thinking much about the Poincaré. He had confidence in Hamilton, despite his slow pace. “Hamilton is a very good friend,” Yau told us in Beijing. “He is more than a friend. He is a hero. He is so original. We were working to finish our proof. Hamilton worked on it for twenty-five years. You work, you get tired. He probably got a little tired—and you want to take a rest.”
Then, on November 12, 2002, Yau received an e-mail message from a Russian mathematician whose name didn’t immediately register. “May I bring to your attention my paper,” the e-mail said.
On November 11th, Perelman had posted a thirty-nine-page paper entitled “The Entropy Formula for the Ricci Flow and Its Geometri Applications,” on arXiv.org, a Web site used by mathematicians to post preprints—articles awaiting publication in refereed journals. He the e-mailed an abstract of his paper to a dozen mathematicians in the United States—including Hamilton, Tian, and Yau—none of whom ha heard from him for years. In the abstract, he explained that he had written “a sketch of an eclectic proof” of the geometrization conjecture
Perelman had not mentioned the proof or shown it to anyone. “I didn’t have any friends with whom I could discuss this,” he said in St. Petersburg. “I didn’t want to discuss my work with someone I didn’t trust.” Andrew Wiles had also kept the fact that he was working on Fermat’s last theorem a secret, but he had had a colleague vet the proof before making it public. Perelman, by casually posting a proof on the Internet of one of the most famous problems in mathematics, was not just flouting academic convention but taking a considerable risk. If the proof was flawed, he would be publicly humiliated, and there would be no way to prevent another mathematician from fixing any errors and claiming victory. But Perelman said he was not particularly concerned. “My reasoning was: if I made an error and someone used my work to construct a correct proof I would be pleased,” he said. “I never set out to be the sole solver of the Poincaré.”
Gang Tian was in his office at M.I.T. when he received Perelman’s e-mail. He and Perelman had been friendly in 1992, when they were both at N.Y.U. and had attended the same weekly math seminar in Princeton. “I immediately realized its importance,” Tian said of Perelman’s paper. Tian began to read the paper and discuss it with colleagues, who were equally enthusiastic.
On November 19th, Vitali Kapovitch, a geometer, sent Perelman an e-mail:
Hi Grisha, Sorry to bother you but a lot of people are asking me about your preprint “The entropy formula for the Ricci . . .” Do I understand it correctly that while you cannot yet do all the steps in the Hamilton program you can do enough so that using some collapsing results you can prove geometrization? Vitali.
Perelman’s response, the next day, was terse: “That’s correct. Grisha.”
In fact, what Perelman had posted on the Internet was only the first installment of his proof. But it was sufficient for mathematicians to see that he had figured out how to solve the Poincaré. Barry Mazur, the Harvard mathematician, uses the image of a dented fender to describe Perelman’s achievement: “Suppose your car has a dented fender and you call a mechanic to ask how to smooth it out. The mechanic would have a hard time telling you what to do over the phone. You would have to bring the car into the garage for him to examine. Then he could tell you where to give it a few knocks. What Hamilton introduced and Perelman completed is a procedure that is independent of the particularities of the blemish. If you apply the Ricci flow to a 3-D space, it will begin to undent it and smooth it out. The mechanic would not need to even see the car—just apply the equation.” Perelman proved that the “cigars” that had troubled Hamilton could not actually occur, and he showed that the “neck” problem could be solved by performing an intricate sequence of mathematical surgeries: cutting out singularities and patching up the raw edges. “Now we have a procedure to smooth things and, at crucial points, control the breaks,” Mazur said.
Tian wrote to Perelman, asking him to lecture on his paper at M.I.T. Colleagues at Princeton and Stony Brook extended similar invitations. Perelman accepted them all and was booked for a month of lectures beginning in April, 2003. “Why not?” he told us with a shrug. Speaking of mathematicians generally, Fedor Nazarov, a mathematician at Michigan State University, said, “After you’ve solved a problem, you have a great urge to talk about it.”
Hamilton and Yau were stunned by Perelman’s announcement. “We felt that nobody else would be able to discover the solution,” Yau tol us in Beijing. “But then, in 2002, Perelman said that he published something. He basically did a shortcut without doing all the detaile estimates that we did.” Moreover, Yau complained, Perelman’s proof “was written in such a messy way that we didn’t understand.
Perelman’s April lecture tour was treated by mathematicians and by the press as a major event. Among the audience at his talk at Princeton were John Ball, Andrew Wiles, John Forbes Nash, Jr., who had proved the Riemannian embedding theorem, and John Conway, the inventor of the cellular automaton game Life. To the astonishment of many in the audience, Perelman said nothing about the Poincaré. “Here is a guy who proved a world-famous theorem and didn’t even mention it,” Frank Quinn, a mathematician at Virginia Tech, said. “He stated some key points and special properties, and then answered questions. He was establishing credibility. If he had beaten his chest and said, ‘I solved it,’ he would have got a huge amount of resistance.” He added, “People were expecting a strange sight. Perelman was much more normal than they expected.”
To Perelman’s disappointment, Hamilton did not attend that lecture or the next ones, at Stony Brook. “I’m a disciple of Hamilton’s, though I haven’t received his authorization,” Perelman told us. But John Morgan, at Columbia, where Hamilton now taught, was in the audience at Stony Brook, and after a lecture he invited Perelman to speak at Columbia. Perelman, hoping to see Hamilton, agreed. The lecture took place on a Saturday morning. Hamilton showed up late and asked no questions during either the long discussion session that followed the talk or the lunch after that. “I had the impression he had read only the first part of my paper,” Perelman said.
In the April 18, 2003, issue of Science, Yau was featured in an article about Perelman’s proof: “Many experts, although not all, seem convinced that Perelman has stubbed out the cigars and tamed the narrow necks. But they are less confident that he can control the number of surgeries. That could prove a fatal flaw, Yau warns, noting that many other attempted proofs of the Poincaré conjecture have stumbled over similar missing steps.” Proofs should be treated with skepticism until mathematicians have had a chance to review them thoroughly, Yau told us. Until then, he said, “it’s not math—it’s religion.”
By mid-July, Perelman had posted the final two installments of his proof on the Internet, and mathematicians had begun the work of formal explication, painstakingly retracing his steps. In the United States, at least two teams of experts had assigned themselves this task: Gang Tian (Yau’s rival) and John Morgan; and a pair of researchers at the University of Michigan. Both projects were supported by the Clay Institute, which planned to publish Tian and Morgan’s work as a book. The book, in addition to providing other mathematicians with a guide to Perelman’s logic, would allow him to be considered for the Clay Institute’s million-dollar prize for solving the Poincaré. (To be eligible, a proof must be published in a peer-reviewed venue and withstand two years of scrutiny by the mathematical community.)
On September 10, 2004, more than a year after Perelman returned to St. Petersburg, he received a long e-mail from Tian, who said that he had just attended a two-week workshop at Princeton devoted to Perelman’s proof. “I think that we have understood the whole paper,” Tian wrote. “It is all right.”
Perelman did not write back. As he explained to us, “I didn’t worry too much myself. This was a famous problem. Some people needed time to get accustomed to the fact that this is no longer a conjecture. I personally decided for myself that it was right for me to stay away from verification and not to participate in all these meetings. It is important for me that I don’t influence this process.”
In July of that year, the National Science Foundation had given nearly a million dollars in grants to Yau, Hamilton, and several students of Yau’s to study and apply Perelman’s “breakthrough.” An entire branch of mathematics had grown up around efforts to solve the Poincaré, and now that branch appeared at risk of becoming obsolete. Michael Freedman, who won a Fields for proving the Poincaré conjecture for the fourth dimension, told the Times that Perelman’s proof was a “small sorrow for this particular branch of topology.” Yuri Burago said, “It kills the field. After this is done, many mathematicians will move to other branches of mathematics.”
Five months later, Chern died, and Yau’s efforts to insure that he-—not Tian—was recognized as his successor turned vicious. “It’s al about their primacy in China and their leadership among the expatriate Chinese,” Joseph Kohn, a former chairman of the Prince-to mathematics department, said. “Yau’s not jealous of Tian’s mathematics, but he’s jealous of his power back in China.
Though Yau had not spent more than a few months at a time on mainland China since he was an infant, he was convinced that his status as the only Chinese Fields Medal winner should make him Chern’s successor. In a speech he gave at Zhejiang University, in Hangzhou, during the summer of 2004, Yau reminded his listeners of his Chinese roots. “When I stepped out from the airplane, I touched the soil of Beijing and felt great joy to be in my mother country,” he said. “I am proud to say that when I was awarded the Fields Medal in mathematics, I held no passport of any country and should certainly be considered Chinese.”
The following summer, Yau returned to China and, in a series of interviews with Chinese reporters, attacked Tian and the mathematicians at Peking University. In an article published in a Beijing science newspaper, which ran under the headline “SHING-TUNG YAU IS SLAMMING ACADEMIC CORRUPTION IN CHINA,” Yau called Tian “a complete mess.” He accused him of holding multiple professorships and of collecting a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars for a few months’ work at a Chinese university, while students were living on a hundred dollars a month. He also charged Tian with shoddy scholarship and plagiarism, and with intimidating his graduate students into letting him add his name to their papers. “Since I promoted him all the way to his academic fame today, I should also take responsibility for his improper behavior,” Yau was quoted as saying to a reporter, explaining why he felt obliged to speak out.
In another interview, Yau described how the Fields committee had passed Tian over in 1988 and how he had lobbied on Tian’s behalf with various prize committees, including one at the National Science Foundation, which awarded Tian five hundred thousand dollars in 1994.
Tian was appalled by Yau’s attacks, but he felt that, as Yau’s former student, there was little he could do about them. “His accusations were baseless,” Tian told us. But, he added, “I have deep roots in Chinese culture. A teacher is a teacher. There is respect. It is very hard for me to think of anything to do.”
While Yau was in China, he visited Xi-Ping Zhu, a protégé of his who was now chairman of the mathematics department at Sun Yat-sen University. In the spring of 2003, after Perelman completed his lecture tour in the United States, Yau had recruited Zhu and another student, Huai-Dong Cao, a professor at Lehigh University, to undertake an explication of Perelman’s proof. Zhu and Cao had studied the Ricci flow under Yau, who considered Zhu, in particular, to be a mathematician of exceptional promise. “We have to figure out whether Perelman’s paper holds together,” Yau told them. Yau arranged for Zhu to spend the 2005-06 academic year at Harvard, where he gave a seminar on Perelman’s proof and continued to work on his paper with Cao.
On April 13th of this year, the thirty-one mathematicians on the editorial board of the Asian Journal of Mathematics received a brief e-mail from Yau and the journal’s co-editor informing them that they had three days to comment on a paper by Xi-Ping Zhu and Huai-Dong Cao titled “The Hamilton-Perelman Theory of Ricci Flow: The Poincaré and Geometrization Conjectures,” which Yau planned to publish in the journal. The e-mail did not include a copy of the paper, reports from referees, or an abstract. At least one board member asked to see the paper but was told that it was not available. On April 16th, Cao received a message from Yau telling him that the paper had been accepted by the A.J.M., and an abstract was posted on the journal’s Web site.
A month later, Yau had lunch in Cambridge with Jim Carlson, the president of the Clay Institute. He told Carlson that he wanted to trade a copy of Zhu and Cao’s paper for a copy of Tian and Morgan’s book manuscript. Yau told us he was worried that Tian would try to steal from Zhu and Cao’s work, and he wanted to give each party simultaneous access to what the other had written. “I had a lunch with Carlson to request to exchange both manuscripts to make sure that nobody can copy the other,” Yau said. Carlson demurred, explaining that the Clay Institute had not yet received Tian and Morgan’s complete manuscript.
By the end of the following week, the title of Zhu and Cao’s paper on the A.J.M.’s Web site had changed, to “A Complete Proof of the Poincaré and Geometrization Conjectures: Application of the Hamilton-Perelman Theory of the Ricci Flow.” The abstract had also been revised. A new sentence explained, “This proof should be considered as the crowning achievement of the Hamilton-Perelman theory of Ricci flow.”
Zhu and Cao’s paper was more than three hundred pages long and filled the A.J.M.’s entire June issue. The bulk of the paper is devoted to reconstructing many of Hamilton’s Ricci-flow results—including results that Perelman had made use of in his proof—and much of Perelman’s proof of the Poincaré. In their introduction, Zhu and Cao credit Perelman with having “brought in fresh new ideas to figure out important steps to overcome the main obstacles that remained in the program of Hamilton.” However, they write, they were obliged to “substitute several key arguments of Perelman by new approaches based on our study, because we were unable to comprehend these original arguments of Perelman which are essential to the completion of the geometrization program.” Mathematicians familiar with Perelman’s proof disputed the idea that Zhu and Cao had contributed significant new approaches to the Poincaré. “Perelman already did it and what he did was complete and correct,” John Morgan said. “I don’t see that they did anything different.”
By early June, Yau had begun to promote the proof publicly. On June 3rd, at his mathematics institute in Beijing, he held a press conference. The acting director of the mathematics institute, attempting to explain the relative contributions of the different mathematicians who had worked on the Poincaré, said, “Hamilton contributed over fifty per cent; the Russian, Perelman, about twenty-five per cent; and the Chinese, Yau, Zhu, and Cao et al., about thirty per cent.” (Evidently, simple addition can sometimes trip up even a mathematician.) Yau added, “Given the significance of the Poincaré, that Chinese mathematicians played a thirty-per-cent role is by no means easy. It is a very important contribution.”
On June 12th, the week before Yau’s conference on string theory opened in Beijing, the South China Morning Post reported, “Mainland mathematicians who helped crack a ‘millennium math problem’ will present the methodology and findings to physicist Stephen Hawking. . . . Yau Shing-Tung, who organized Professor Hawking’s visit and is also Professor Cao’s teacher, said yesterday he would present the findings to Professor Hawking because he believed the knowledge would help his research into the formation of black holes.”
On the morning of his lecture in Beijing, Yau told us, “We want our contribution understood. And this is also a strategy to encourage Zhu, who is in China and who has done really spectacular work. I mean, important work with a century-long problem, which will probably have another few century-long implications. If you can attach your name in any way, it is a contribution.”
E. T. Bell, the author of “Men of Mathematics,” a witty history of the discipline published in 1937, once lamented “the squabbles ove priority which disfigure scientific history.” But in the days before e-mail, blogs, and Web sites, a certain decorum usually prevailed. In 1881 Poincaré, who was then at the University of Caen, had an altercation with a German mathematician in Leipzig named Felix Klein. Poincar had published several papers in which he labelled certain functions “Fuchsian,” after another mathematician. Klein wrote to Poincaré pointing out that he and others had done significant work on these functions, too. An exchange of polite letters between Leipzig and Cae ensued. Poincaré’s last word on the subject was a quote from Goethe’s “Faust”: Name ist Schall und Rauch.” Loosely translated, that corresponds to Shakespeare’s “What’s in a name?”
This, essentially, is what Yau’s friends are asking themselves. “I find myself getting annoyed with Yau that he seems to feel the need for more kudos,” Dan Stroock, of M.I.T., said. “This is a guy who did magnificent things, for which he was magnificently rewarded. He won every prize to be won. I find it a little mean of him to seem to be trying to get a share of this as well.” Stroock pointed out that, twenty-five years ago, Yau was in a situation very similar to the one Perelman is in today. His most famous result, on Calabi-Yau manifolds, was hugely important for theoretical physics. “Calabi outlined a program,” Stroock said. “In a real sense, Yau was Calabi’s Perelman. Now he’s on the other side. He’s had no compunction at all in taking the lion’s share of credit for Calabi-Yau. And now he seems to be resenting Perelman getting credit for completing Hamilton’s program. I don’t know if the analogy has ever occurred to him.”
Mathematics, more than many other fields, depends on collaboration. Most problems require the insights of several mathematicians in order to be solved, and the profession has evolved a standard for crediting individual contributions that is as stringent as the rules governing math itself. As Perelman put it, “If everyone is honest, it is natural to share ideas.” Many mathematicians view Yau’s conduct over the Poincaré as a violation of this basic ethic, and worry about the damage it has caused the profession. “Politics, power, and control have no legitimate role in our community, and they threaten the integrity of our field,” Phillip Griffiths said.
Perelman likes to attend opera performances at the Mariinsky Theatre, in St. Petersburg. Sitting high up in the back of the house, he can’ make out the singers’ expressions or see the details of their costumes. But he cares only about the sound of their voices, and he says that th acoustics are better where he sits than anywhere else in the theatre. Perelman views the mathematics community—and much of the large world—from a similar remove
Before we arrived in St. Petersburg, on June 23rd, we had sent several messages to his e-mail address at the Steklov Institute, hoping to arrange a meeting, but he had not replied. We took a taxi to his apartment building and, reluctant to intrude on his privacy, left a book—a collection of John Nash’s papers—in his mailbox, along with a card saying that we would be sitting on a bench in a nearby playground the following afternoon. The next day, after Perelman failed to appear, we left a box of pearl tea and a note describing some of the questions we hoped to discuss with him. We repeated this ritual a third time. Finally, believing that Perelman was out of town, we pressed the buzzer for his apartment, hoping at least to speak with his mother. A woman answered and let us inside. Perelman met us in the dimly lit hallway of the apartment. It turned out that he had not checked his Steklov e-mail address for months, and had not looked in his mailbox all week. He had no idea who we were.
We arranged to meet at ten the following morning on Nevsky Prospekt. From there, Perelman, dressed in a sports coat and loafers, took us on a four-hour walking tour of the city, commenting on every building and vista. After that, we all went to a vocal competition at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, which lasted for five hours. Perelman repeatedly said that he had retired from the mathematics community and no longer considered himself a professional mathematician. He mentioned a dispute that he had had years earlier with a collaborator over how to credit the author of a particular proof, and said that he was dismayed by the discipline’s lax ethics. “It is not people who break ethical standards who are regarded as aliens,” he said. “It is people like me who are isolated.” We asked him whether he had read Cao and Zhu’s paper. “It is not clear to me what new contribution did they make,” he said. “Apparently, Zhu did not quite understand the argument and reworked it.” As for Yau, Perelman said, “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.”
The prospect of being awarded a Fields Medal had forced him to make a complete break with his profession. “As long as I was not conspicuous, I had a choice,” Perelman explained. “Either to make some ugly thing”—a fuss about the math community’s lack of integrity—“or, if I didn’t do this kind of thing, to be treated as a pet. Now, when I become a very conspicuous person, I cannot stay a pet and say nothing. That is why I had to quit.” We asked Perelman whether, by refusing the Fields and withdrawing from his profession, he was eliminating any possibility of influencing the discipline. “I am not a politician!” he replied, angrily. Perelman would not say whether his objection to awards extended to the Clay Institute’s million-dollar prize. “I’m not going to decide whether to accept the prize until it is offered,” he said.
Mikhail Gromov, the Russian geometer, said that he understood Perelman’s logic: “To do great work, you have to have a pure mind. You can think only about the mathematics. Everything else is human weakness. Accepting prizes is showing weakness.” Others might view Perelman’s refusal to accept a Fields as arrogant, Gromov said, but his principles are admirable. “The ideal scientist does science and cares about nothing else,” he said. “He wants to live this ideal. Now, I don’t think he really lives on this ideal plane. But he wants to.”
由 云中君 于 08-27-2006 01:20 AM 最后编辑 草庐门人
据闻（^_^北大两全其美），已经有好几位数学家公开质疑纽约客上这篇文章的真实性。还是静观其变吧。
云中君
草庐君的意见值得重视，若能提供更具体的资料就更好了。有朋友给我转来一篇中文的评论这一事件的文章，写得很生动也清楚，转发于此继续供各位参考。我觉得网路是自由的空间，但这种自由在中国常被滥用，这是我们都必须引起警觉的。
从Poincare猜想到Poincare定理——一个馒头引发的血案
由Zhang-Zi发表于25th August 2006
作者：独钓寒江雪
盛传Poincaré猜想终于被证明了，从此演变为Poincaré定理。据说Poincaré定理的伟大意义在于，如果亲爱的天文学家能够证明宇宙是单连通的、封闭的、三维的流形，那么我们就可以把宇宙想象成一个馒头。所以那些企图把宇宙当作面包圈吃掉的同学们恐怕要失望了。
当然从现实的角度来看，Poincaré的馒头倒是真正养活了一批数学家。可惜这些被称为数学家的小朋友耍起了脾气，听说有个叫Hamilton的小朋友当年提供了一个秘方，有个叫Yau的小朋友看了一眼说，哦，原来是蒸馒头用的，就是还差点。本来很有希望，结果大家蒸了好多年愣是蒸不出来。这个时候有个叫Perelman的俄国小朋友自己在家里偷偷蒸了一锅馒头，把照片给大家一看，嗬，这不就是传说中的馒头么？但是Perelman小朋友从此不来幼儿园了，这可怎么办？其他小朋友只能按照Perelman小朋友的方法接着蒸馒头，终于一蒸蒸到了2006年。蒸完馒头争馒头。Yau小朋友替Cao小朋友和Zhu小朋友出头，说这个馒头是他们最后蒸出来的，却见Tian小朋友和Morgan小朋友也没闲着，人家正在写蒸馒头手册。结果最后向日葵小班的Ball班长说，这个馒头啊，还是人家小P的，要奖励小P小红花一朵。没成想Ball班长到小P家里去的时候，人家小P说，馒头我都蒸出来了，要你这小红花干啥？
蒸馒头是苦差事，全世界会蒸的多说也就十来个人。不过这争馒头可就热闹了，大字报小字报满天飞，从不学无术到抄袭拼凑，从兼职骗钱到勾结官府，猛料迭出，估计写部《四刻拍案惊奇》早就绰绰有余了，其间众生嘴脸，直堪比镜花缘。只见那边厢Yau与无名小报《北京科技报》谈笑风生，这边厢某大便就风声鹤唳。从去年夏天不点名批评某弟子，到指责某大本科教育水平低下；从指名道姓说Tian抄袭，到炮轰某大学阀；从批评院士制度，到质疑长江教授；从蒸馒头，到争馒头，Yau终于在中文媒体和网络中掀起了一场批判大潮，同志们！运动啦！七八周就来一次！
终于不幸的时刻在2006年8月23日降临，《纽约客》上竟然不识相地把馒头给了Perelman，而且将Yau描写成了一个争名夺利的市侩。据分析家指出，这篇文章的出现，标志着Yau-Tian-某大之间的恩怨已经进入了英文世界的主流媒体，实质上伤害了整个华人数学圈，甚至整个华人学术圈。抛开民族感情不谈，此言不谬。不论事态如何发展，不论Yau所说的抄袭、兼职和学阀等等是否属实，整个华人数学界声誉扫地恐怕都是无可改变的事实了。
然而这个世界只会缺少荒谬的事实，却永远不会缺少可笑的逻辑。因为英文媒体说了Yau坏话，所以一定是Yau的敌人捣蛋，画个圈子左右一框，那就必然是Tian通风报信了！永远站在道德制高点的网络暴民，关心的从来不是事实真相，而是任何可以表现自己卓尔不群的机会。在这个坐在屏幕背后就可以指点江山的年代，人人都是最伟大的思想家。
抄袭门、兼职门的真相如何，恐怕也不是一两天就能水落石出的。而在Yau不断的指责中，Tian迄今只说了一句话：我尊师重道。于是Yau的面对空气挥拳，终于一时失手栽入了馒头门的是非官司中，但愿在今后不太好过的岁月中，Yau能够不蒸馒头争口气……
这就是，一个馒头引发的血案。
seyvora
我没能找到原始出处....
********************
MIT数学系Dan
由 shanqin 在 周六, 2006-08-26 20:56 提交
MIT数学系Dan Stroock教授所作的澄清(附译文）
Clarification
I, like several others whom Sylvia Nasar interviewed, am shocked and ang
ered by the article which she and Gruber wrote for the New Yorker. Having
seen Yau in action during his June conference on string theory, Nasar led
me to believe that she was fascinated by S-T Yau and asked me my opinion
about his activities. I told her that I greatly admire Yau's efforts to
support young Chinese mathematicians and to break down the ossified
power structure in the Chinese academic establishment. I then told her t
hat I sometimes have doubts about his methodology. In particular, I told
her that, at least to my ears, Yau weakens his case and lays himself open
to his enemies by sounding too self-promoting.
As it appears in her article, she has purposefully distorted my statement
and made it unforgivably misleading. Like the rest of us, Yau has his
faults, but, unlike most of us, his virtues outweigh his faults.
Unfortunately, Nasar used my statement to bolster her case
that the opposite is true, and for this I cannot forgive her.
澄清
Nasar与Gruber发表在《纽约人》杂志上的文章让我，以及其他接受Sylvia Nasar采
访的人一样，感到震惊与愤怒。Nasar在六月参加了丘担任大会主席的国际超弦大会
后，设法让我相信她对丘成桐非常崇拜，询问我对于他的活动的看法。我告诉她，
我很仰慕丘在支持中国年轻数学家，以及改变中国学术界的腐朽现状所作的努力。
我告诉她，有时候我觉得他的处事方法值得商榷。特别的，我告诉她，至少在我眼
中，丘不注意保护自己，过于特立独行，而把自己暴露在敌人面前。如同她文章中
所写的那样，她有意歪曲我的陈述，并且不可原谅地加以杜撰。
与大多数人一样，丘也有自己的缺点；但是大多数人无法比拟的是，他的高尚品德
远远超过他的缺点。不幸的是，Nasar用我的话来支持她的反面论证。为此我无法原
谅她。
纽约石溪分校数学系
由 shanqin 在 周六, 2006-08-26 20:57 提交
纽约石溪分校数学系教授Michael Anderson致丘先生信件（附译文）
Dear Yau,
I am furious, and completely shocked, at what Sylvia Nasar wrote. Her qu
ote of me is completely wrong and baseless. There are other factual mist
akes in the article, in addition to those you pointed out.
I have left her phone and email messages this evening and hope to speak
to her tomorrow at the latest to clear this up. I want her to remove th
is statement completely from the article. It serves
no purpose and contains no factual inxxxxation; I view it as stupid goss
ip unworthy of a paper like the New Yorker. At the moment, the print ver
sion has not appeared and so it might be possible to fix this still. I s
pent several hours with S. Nasar on the phone talking about Perelman, Po
incare, etc but it seems I was too naive (and I'm now disgusted) in beli
eving this journalist would report factually.
I regret very much this quote falsely attributed to me and will do what
ever I can to have it removed.
I will keep you inxxxxed as I know more.
Yours, Michael
对于Nasar文章中所写的文字，我感到极为愤怒，非常震惊。他引用我所说的话完全
是错误的，没有根据的。除了你所指出的以外，文章中还有其他不真实的地方。
今天晚上我已经给她留了电话与email，希望明天能够与她交谈，把问题向她说清楚
。我希望他把我的这些话完全从文章中删除。这些话毫无意义可言，完全不包含什
么实际的信息；我只把它看作是愚蠢的闲谈，根本不值得登上《纽约人》杂志的文
章。目前，这期杂志还没有正式印刷，所以还有补救的机会。
我花了许多小时在电话里与S. Nasar讨论Perelman,Poincare等。可是我太天真地（
现在感到极度恶心）相信这个记者会真实地报道我所说的话。
我很抱歉这些话居然被放到了我的嘴里，我会尽全力把它删除的。
在我获得更多信息后，会随时通知您。
Anderson澄清Nasar对他的歪曲引用
Many of you have probably seen the New Yorker article by Sylvia Nasar an
d David Gruber on Perelman and the Poincare conjecture.
In many respects, its very interesting and a pleasure to read. However,
it contains a number of inaccuracies and downright errors.
I spent several hours talking with Sylvia Nasar trying to dissuade her f
rom incorporating the Tian-Yau fights into the article, since it was com
pletely irrelevant and I didn't see the point of dragging readers throug
h the mud.
Obviously I was not successful.
The quote attributed to me on Yau is completely inaccurate and distorted
from some remarks I made to her in a quite different context; I made it
explicit to her that the remarks I was making in that context were pure
ly speculative and had no basis in fact. I did not give her my permissio
n to quote me on this, even with the qualification of speculation.
There are other inaccuracies about Stony Brook. One for instance is the
implication that Tian at MIT was the first to invite Perelman to the US
to give talks. This is of course false - we at Stony Brook were the firs
t to do so. I stressed in my talks with her the role Stony Brook played,
yet she focusses on the （single） talk Grisha gave at Princeton, listi
ng a collection of eminent mathematicians, none of whom is a geometer/to
pologist.
I was not given an opportunity to set the record straight with the New Y
orker before publication; this was partly because I was travelling in Eu
rope at the time this happened, and there was a rush to publish; the pub
lication date is the same as the announcement date of the Fields Medals
I think. I was not sent an advance copy of the article for checking. I s
poke with Sylvia on the phone this morning, to no avail. I've also had s
ome email correspondence with Yau on the matter over the last day. I apo
logized to him and expressed my anger and frustration about what was don
e, confirming to him the quote attributed to me is false and baseless. （
The email to Yau is now already posted on a Chinese blog site!）.
I've learned my lesson on dealing with the media the hard and sour way a
nd am still considering what path to pursue to try to rectify the situat
ion, to the extent still possible.
Sincerely,
Mike
Nasar和Gruber的文章包含了一些不准确，甚至完全错误的信息。
我昨天与Nasar谈了几个小时，希望劝说她把田-丘的争论从文章中删除，因为我觉
得这与文章主题完全无关。
可是我没有成功。
关于Nasar文章中引用的所谓我对丘教授的"评价"是不确切的，完全歪曲了我接受采
访时的本意。我明确告诉她，当时我告诉她的内容是出于假想，没有事实根据。我
从来没有允许她这样引用我的话。
文章对于石溪分校也有不实之处。有一处说，田是最早邀请Perelman到美国访问的
。这当然是错误的。我与石溪分校的同事比田更早。我向Nasar强调石溪分校在其中
所起的作用，可是她只把注意力放在Grisha在普林斯顿所给的唯一一个报告上面，
她给出了一个著名数学家的名单，没有一个几何或拓扑学家。
我没能抓住机会在New Yorker文章发表前向编辑告知文章的真相，这是因为我当时
正在欧洲旅游，而且New Yorker在没有核实的情况下就匆忙发表。我想这篇文章的
出版日期正好就是菲尔兹奖颁发的那一天。之前我居然没有收到作者的稿件以确认
真实性。我今天早上与Nasar在电话里谈，可是没有用。昨天，我已经为这件事与丘
教授通了email，我向他道歉并表达了我对Nasar文章的愤怒与失望，我向他保证，
Nasar对我的引用是完全错误的，没有事实根据的。
我从这次与媒体的交往中体会到了苦涩，也算一种教训。我会尽我的全力来改变目
前的状况，把真相公诸于世。
由 seyvora 于 08-27-2006 05:00 AM 最后编辑
说说
转引自新语丝
送交者: polik 于 2006-08-25, 19:48:45:
一个最佳新闻学博士论文题目
读了纽约客上抹黑丘成桐的文章，本人觉得这是一件很可能要进入数学史和新闻学史的大事。从主旨看很清楚，该文是要对丘作系统的人格谋杀：（1）丘是个权力狂（如：急于坐上中国数学家一把交椅）。（2）丘是个名利狂（如：在mirror symmetry问题与Grevital抢功，在Poincare和Thurston猜想上与Perelman抢功）。（3）丘在同行里不得人心（如：引用了好几个大人物对丘的批判）。（4）丘的名气与贡献不相称（如：通过暗示或明说，污蔑丘只是一个解决具体问题的高手并无开创一个新领域）。（5）丘是个狂热的民族主义份子（如：常常急于在公开场合表达自己的中国人身份，夸大中国籍（裔）数学家的贡献等）。
鉴于作者虽然是个新闻学教授，但其真正特长是写小说（其名作是A beautiful mind ，以此改编的电影得了Oscar），因此，写出如此outrageous的文章，受人指使写雇佣文章的可能性应该不大，但受有用心人士之“提醒＂和“说明＂之误导则几乎不可能排除。更可能是小说家的写作习惯带到人物报导上来所致，还有一个可能当然就是她急于再出风头，巴不得写出来的文章引发（数学）世界大战。但其客观效果是一样的：足以毁灭丘及其追随者的一个核武器。
由于涉及了大量的重量级人物和数学大事，相关的评论和反击应该会陆续出现，因此，这种文章的后果现在还远远没有办法评估。不过，很显然，主作者Nassar必将再次大出风头，而与此文章有关一些东西会进入数学史和新闻学史。
有志写出高水平新闻学博士论文的中国留学生应该认真考虑此一题目。把此文当作一个新闻事件，完整地调查出它的来龙去脉，造成的冲击，以及长远的后效。你很可能是在抢搭一辆难得的学术顺风车。
今后如果有人因此写出得奖的博士论文，请依良心捐9999美元给新语丝打假基金。
云中君
上面引的新语丝的文章中文翻译和英文原文出入相当大。我发现原来英文中基本中性的词语在中文翻译中都成了表达强烈立场的文字。我觉得这种翻译不仅不负责任，而且有故意误导之嫌。举例如下：
Dan Stroock的信的中文翻译中说 Nasar “设法让我(Dan Stroock) 相信她对丘成桐非常崇拜 .“ 而英文原文中是Nasar led me to believe that she was fascinated by S-T Yau。其中在中文里“非常崇拜“一词在英文里是 fascinated，也就是表示深感兴趣的意思。“表示深感兴趣“和表示“非常崇拜“ 有性质上的不同。感兴趣是个很中性的词，我可以对气功很感兴趣，但我感兴趣的理由可能是因为我对这个现象有兴趣，而非觉得气功很了不起。
另一个明显的例子是英文原文中有一段：
In particular, I told her that, at least to my ears, Yau weakens his case and lays himself open to his enemies by sounding too self-promoting.
在中译中成了：
特别的，我告诉她，至少在我眼中，丘不注意保护自己，过于特立独行，而把自己暴露在敌人面前。如同她文章中
所写的那样，她有意歪曲我的陈述，并且不可原谅地加以杜撰。
其实比较确切的翻译应该是：
“我特别对她指出，至少从我听到的情况来说，丘由于给人一种一意要推销自己的成就的感觉，从而削弱了他自己的意见的说服力并且为对手提供了反击的方便。“
中文里的 “不注意保护自己，过于特立独行“ 云云，英文里完全没有这些意思。我发现这种通过玩弄翻译而上下其手的现象在中文网路和媒体中非常普遍，实在可恶极了。
其实 Nasar 的文章主要的目的是说明数学研究必须有合作精神，所以不能不充分承认他人的成果。她所涉及的有关丘田之争的讨论还是很次要的。而在庞加莱猜想问题上，丘刻意压制Perelmen 的成绩才是她批评的重点。其实像她这样如此引用原文
由 云中君 于 08-27-2006 08:30 AM 最后编辑 一位国内著名大学数学系教授谈北大数学系在国内一手遮天的内幕
《南方人物周刊》，2006年第21期
他们已经形成了一个利益团体
——对一个著名数学教授的匿名访问
“因为选院士的时候他们可以掌控的，你去看一看，选院士，北大有多少票？现在是——
任何人得罪他们，那肯定就当不了院士”
本刊记者 张欢 实习记者 钟良
应本刊的邀请，一位国内名牌大学数学系的著名教授接受了访问，向记者透露了国内高等
教育存在的某些“潜规则”。
尽管该教授在国内外享有很高的学术地位，但仍然不敢透露自己的姓名和学校，因为“这
里面的内幕是你们不懂的”。
有点白色恐怖的味道
教授：坦白地讲，这样与你对话，会给学校以后的发展带来很大的麻烦。所以最好不要把
我的名字说出来。这里有许多老师，一个项目一失去的话，整个系的发展就会受限制。
人物周刊：我知道您对北大数学系有尖锐批评，特别是在他们对国内科研基金的项目控制
方面……
教授：不光科研基金了，有些大的项目（记者：比如说？），教育部、科技部啦，973计划
（编者注：国家重点基础研究发展规划）啦，还有申报一些教育部的奖，因为评委里面都
有北大的，或者他们的朋友，我们会都拿不到了。
他们形成了一个利益团体，因为选院士的时候他们可以掌控的，你去看一看，选院士，北
大有多少票？现在是——任何人得罪他们，那肯定就当不了院士。
人物周刊：这个现象您是单指数学系？还是……
教授：别的方向我不了解，数学系我了解一些。我们这么多年观察过来，这个样子下去是
没有办法的。我一个海外朋友开玩笑说，我们可以公开讨论任何人，开玩笑都没问题，但
你不敢私下讨论北大（数学领域）的院士们，要是他们听到后你就麻烦了。到这个地步，
有点白色恐怖的味道了。
人物周刊：有这么霸道吗？
教授：就是这个样子。丘成桐先生之所以恼火，原因就是这个，连丘先生这样的都敢死扛
着、死顶着，就别说我们这样的小人物了。要是没有丘先生出来说话，那会是什么样子，
你可以想象！
当年有华（罗庚）老在，他可以指明一些方向，带出一些好学生，这么多年了，没有像他
这样有威望的人来带着中国的数学往前走，一片混乱！因为他们的数学也不行，但是他们
掌控着中国（数学领域）的发展：通过他们控制的奖金和基金，可以调节你的数学的发展
方向。这二十年中国数学没有大的发展，原因就是这样。
钱是投入越来越多，但是你发现效果反而不如以前。许多人都意识到了这个问题，但你又
能怎么办？
人物周刊：您认为北大方面自己也意识到了吗？
教授：我想他们心里也知道。但是一到利益关口，他们就以利益为重。而且他们现在完全
掌控着（数学领域）院士的选举，院士选举是重头戏，很多年轻人 为了当院士，就低三下
四，可以说是忍气吞声，包括做学问等，完全是人格都变了。
人物周刊：我很难理解。
教授：我就知道一些人为了当选院士，生怕得罪北大，真是低三下四地讨好他们，（记者
：比如说？）还是不提他们的名字吧。
人物周刊：他们可以做出什么牺牲来换取一个院士头衔呢？
教授：很多时候要和他们拉关系，要有意去讨好他们，比如说开会邀请他们，还有一些评
奖，如果他们也在里面的话，就要有意去照顾北大，或者让给北大。想方设法地让步。说
白了，就要低头哈腰，夹着尾巴做人，就是这样。
人物周刊：您谈的是北大数学系的情况，那别的学校呢？
教授：没有实力和它抗衡。（问记者：你是指数学方向吗？）比如说清华的数学系，他们
的数学也很强，有很多杰出的青年，但到现在没有一个能当上长江教授的。这说明什么问
题？而北大的推一个上一个。
更别说院士了。别的学校想当院士难上加难，除非是复旦的、中科院的。现在中科院也上
不去院士了，基本上北大说了算，（记者：为什么？）因为他们自己内部不团结。北大拉
了一些中科院的院士和他们合作。你可以看看最近评的一些大奖，评审委员都是些什么人
。
人物周刊：都是北大数学系方面的？
教授：对。他们要是给了一个（奖项）给其他学校的，评选院士时（其他学校的）人就要
投他们的票。各种奖项啊、评审啊，完全成了一种拉帮结派的工具。坦白地说这批人退休
了，你就会发现晴朗很多，发展趋势会好很多。陈（省身）先生离开（去世）前讲的那番
话，你就知道他发牢骚的缘故了。
人物周刊：包括陈省身先生这样的，都没有办法吗？
人物周刊：他哪里有办法啊？！他希望他手下那几个年轻人能够当院士，但是就是当不上
。人人都知道水平够了，连北大数学系的都知道水平够了，就是当不上。他要是不让你当
，你就别想当。这样就形成了了一个利益交织网。
当然他们也不是百分之百都那么差，有时候也有公正的一面，在不损害他们利益时，也有
公正的时候。大部分时候我觉得他们做得是很过分的。
应该有媒体监督
人物周刊：总结您的讲话，是不是可以这么说，那些人通过控制奖项，逼得全国高校数学
系的老师们全听他们的？
教授：就是围着他们转。
人物周刊：为什么这个评选委员会还能多年维持下去呢？
教授：这么多年来，他们跟方方面面的一些关系都拉好了，评选委员会总是他们的人。而
且一些真的很优秀的老先生，比如王元（编者注：著名数学家），年龄大了、退休了，他
们对这些事很烦，退了就把空缺给了这些人。
人物周刊：那在您看来，北大数学系对全国其他高校数学系的挤压，在其他高校存在吗？
教授：数学这块，基本上就是北大、中科院和复旦这三派。我想（数学领域的数学家）任
何一个想当院士的，一定要投靠这三派之一。现在北大的势力最强，它的院士最多。你要
是不投靠这三派，你几乎不可能评上院士。
人物周刊：在您看来，这种院士制度，有必要废除吗？
教授：我想以前周光召（著名物理学家）、丘成桐他们都这么想过，要么降低标准，让很
多人都能上院士，把院士的权力和威望降低；另外就是真的把它废除。废除的话，我想现
在已经是院士的人不太能同意，相反他们把这个门槛提得更高了，要2/3通过你才能入选（
院士）。这样的话北大的更强了。
人物周刊：为什么？
教授：他们本身就占据了2/3的票。
人物周刊：普通民众心中，院士评选本来是非常崇高的啊。
教授：这些院士本身跟太多利益挂钩，一方面，他们（自身）掌控着很多利益，另外他们
享受着部级待遇，也很高，这两方面给了他们太多的特权。
人物周刊：什么特权？
教授：要是院士要拿几个项目，那是百分之百地拿。而且每次评审组的组长一定是院士，
所以他们的权力非常大。
人物周刊：普通民众怎么也想不到院士里面会有这么多事。
教授：就是这样。要不丘先生这么恼火！周光召是院士，都要求取消院士制度，可见实在
是有点过分了！
人物周刊：那在你看来，这种学术界的腐败现象，如果有媒体介入的话，会不会有帮助？
教授：应该有舆论监督。我觉得你要是报道得比较准确，比如像丘先生这样的观点，会产
生好的效果。他是一身黑，没办法反驳，不敢公开否认，包括北大数学学院没一个人敢实
名站出来，拍着胸脯说：“你说的都是假话。”连一个出来说几句圆场话的都不敢。
但是报道不准确的话，被他们抓住漏洞，反过来会让我们和你们媒体失信。你知道他们心
虚，但是另一方面，他就是在等着抓你的漏洞，看到你说的话不准确，或者表达得不是很
准确，他就反咬一口，又要搞得天下大乱。
人物周刊：弊病这么多，那么在现有情况下，就没有可能建立一个好的评审制度吗？
教授：现在有一点病入膏肓了，只有等，等到这一批人真的退休。我也希望，丘先生的话
能够刺醒某些人。我想一些中央领导人都开始重视了，往往会有好的现象出现，至少可以
让以前为所欲为的那些人收敛一些。
人物周刊：在目前的教育体制不能根本改变的情况下，那您觉得我们的高等教育该怎么办
呢？
教授：慢慢改善吧？总体来讲，中央领导还是很尊敬这些真正有水平的专家学者的。他们
的意见要是能够被参考、受到重视，就像温家宝总理对丘先生的批评意见亲笔批示那样，
让他们能真正参与国内一些教育政策制订，情况会慢慢改善的。 ………………
受教了 天人做新闻编辑也很合格啊，哈哈。
Sylvia Nasar的文笔自不必说，俺也很喜欢，谢谢天人。 丘成桐与北大的矛盾由来已久。
主要还是丘看不惯国内的教育体制。 丘如果是象纽约客上说的那样，他一定会把证明庞加莱的成果归于自己，而不是他的几个学生。
反倒是国内才有这种学霸吧？ 关于丘田之争，外人是很难评论的，至于那篇文章的作者我却有点话想说。我拜读过她写的《普林斯顿的幽灵》（现在中文版改名为《美丽心灵》），感觉她在叙述的时候，充分表现了她作为记者的本质特征：以事实为依据，却喜欢夸大事实。更重要的是从她的书中明显看出她对数学的理解力只能是一个感兴趣的聪明人的程度，谈不上任何专业，她在纳什传记中虽然尽力表达了一些数学概念，但是更多的只是摘抄了数学问题定义而已。
至于Poincare猜想，俄罗斯的数学家确实已经提出一套完整的思路，但他没有完整的写下证明，而大家都知道作为数学难题，一个表面上行的通的思路却未必是事实上行的通的证明，譬如数学考试中如果你只写下题目的证明思路，却没有完整的证明，老师未必能给你恰当的分数。
西方数学家自19世纪以来都对东方的数学家有一种居高临下的心理优势，这使得他们在很长的时间内无视中国数学的成就，以微分几何而论，陈省身先生去世以前是这个领域公认的领袖人物，这是他们很多人被迫接受的事实，但先生已死，他们自然不再甘心让中国人成为先生的继任。事实上丘先生当年获得Fileds奖已经可以充分表明了他的成就，至少在中国还没有第二个获得此奖项的，那帮北大的蠢材有何资格评论丘的成就？
自中国开始派留学生以来，中国学生在数学和物理上在美国的影响力越来越大，据《科学美国人》报道：911事件发生后，由于美国大规模提高对中国学生的签证要求，美国物理学会曾向美国国会抗议称此举“有导致美国物理学水平下降”的危险（这篇文章是我亲眼证实，我买了这一期杂志，我还记得这是篇讲述LED改造的文章）。如果设想Poincare猜想最终证明的桂冠落到中国人头上，那将对中国在数学界的地位产生很大的影响，不懂数学的人很难明白Poincare猜想在数学和物理中的重大影响，事实上整个21世纪这一百年都未必在数学上还有比它更重要的猜想被证明。
至于说那俄罗斯的数学家拒收Fileds奖，固然可能是他不为名利，但更可能的是他都不需要这个奖，作为被认为证明Poincare猜想的数学家这个荣誉本身就足以确保他在21世纪数学领域最伟大的人物之一的地位，就跟爱因斯坦一样，如果当年爱因斯坦没有领取诺贝尔奖，对他是不会有任何损失的，他仍然是上个世纪最伟大的物理学家。
不管如何朱和曹教授的成就是值得敬佩的，这是中国人在数学上的巨大贡献。
沉痛悼念陈省身先生。 无论如何，邱成桐已经成为小丑。
他忘了，中国人善于挖更索底，忘了揭别人的短之前要把自己的尾巴藏好。
自古，恶人先告状的，还真不少，科学家犯浑，还真不少。
但，他要和牛顿（微积分发明之争），爱因斯坦（晚年的所谓科技研究），郭沫若（从文人学者到政治动物的蜕变），霍金（自认错误的宇宙猜想）等等，简直不可等量齐观。
甚至，他连杨振宁也不如了。
兄弟，你做的，世界上没几个人懂你。满好至少你活着的时候，可以获得足够的财富和虚名，又何必搞得大家看你的猴子红屁股。
国内的问题，大家都知道一点，但你的，我们恐怕才知道。
很好很好。
狗咬狗，一嘴毛。
以上。 nasar相关中文稿，个人觉得明显具有倾向性，主观臆断成分太多，毕竟是作家。
Tommy Lee来稿/《纽约人》（New Yorker）杂志2006年8月28日最新的一期刊载了长篇文章“流形的命运求求传奇问题以及谁是破解者之争”（MANIFOLDDESTINY--- A legendary problem and the battle over who solved it）。文章作者之一SylviaNasar是哥伦比亚大学新闻系讲座教授，曾入围最后一轮普利策奖，《美丽心灵》一书的作者。另一位作者是David Gruber。
文章作者通过大量采访报道了数学界围绕庞加莱猜想和几何化猜想的争论，其中着墨最多的是两位数学家。一位是因破解两个猜想而闻名于世的俄罗斯数学家佩雷尔 曼；另一位是挑起争论的美籍华裔数学家丘成桐。文章有一幅插图，巧妙地点明了本文主题：图中佩雷尔曼站立着占据了画面的一大半，脖子上挂着一枚菲尔兹奖 章；而左下角的丘成桐板着面孔用手牢牢抓住那枚奖章。以下是对原文的摘要编译稿，其中的“我们”均指原文的两位作者。
1。佩雷尔曼
我们于6月23日到达圣彼得堡，专程采访佩雷尔曼。在这之前佩雷尔曼从未接受过采访。在我们之前，国际数学家联盟主席John Ball秘密拜访了佩雷尔曼，他的唯一目的是说服佩雷尔曼接受将在8月份国际数学家大会上颁发的菲尔兹奖。谁都知道这是数学界的最高荣誉，此前共有44位 数学家获此殊荣，没有人拒绝过接受这个荣誉。然而面对Ball教授两天共十个小时的劝说，佩雷尔曼的回答只是“我拒绝。”他对我们说：“如果我的证明是正 确的，别种方式的承认是不必要的。”
佩雷尔曼于1992年访问美国，他的生活极为俭朴，只吃面包，芝士和牛奶。在纽约大学他结识了年轻的中国数学家田刚，每星期他们一起开车去普林斯顿参加高 等研究院的讨论班。佩雷尔曼读了哈密尔顿关于瑞奇流的文章，还在高等研究院听了他给的一个报告。佩雷尔曼说：“你不用是大数学家也可以看出这对几何化会有 用。”
1993年佩雷尔曼开始在伯克莱进行为期两年的访问，适逢哈密尔顿来校作系列演讲。一次报告后，哈密尔顿告诉佩雷尔曼他所遇到的最大的一些障碍，其中之一 是叫做“雪茄”的一类奇点。佩雷尔曼意识到，他写的一篇没有发表的文章可能对解决这个问题有用，问哈密尔顿是否知道这篇文章。但哈密尔顿似乎没有了解这篇 文章的重要。
1994年，佩雷尔曼因写出了几篇非常有原创性的论文而被邀请在国际数学家大会作报告。好几家大学，包括斯坦福和普林斯顿，邀请他去申请职位。但是他拒绝 了一些学校提供的职位，于1995年夏天回到圣彼得堡。他说：“我意识到我在俄国会工作得更好。”斯坦福的Eliashberg 说他回俄国是为了解决庞加莱猜想，佩雷尔曼对这种说法没有表示反对。
在俄国他独自工作，只通过英特网搜集他所需要的知识。Gromov,一位曾与佩雷尔曼合作过的着名几何学家说：“他不需要任何帮助，喜欢一个人工作。他使 我想起牛顿，着迷于自己的想法，不去理睬别人的意见。”1995年，哈密尔顿发表了一篇文章，其中描述了他对于完成庞加莱猜想的证明的一些想法。佩雷尔曼 对我们说，从这篇文章中“我看不出他在1992年之后有任何进展。可能更早些时候他就被卡在哪儿了。”然而佩雷尔曼却认为自己看到了解决问题的道路。 1996年，他给哈密尔顿写了一封长信，描述了他的想法，寄希望于哈密尔顿会同他合作。但是，佩雷尔曼说，“他没有回答。所以我决定自己干。”
2002年11月11日，佩雷尔曼在网络数学文库arXiv.org上张贴了他的第一篇文章，之后他通过电子邮件把文章摘要发送给在美国的一些数学家，包 括哈密尔顿，田刚和丘成桐。之前他没有同任何人讨论过这篇文章，因为“我不想同我不信任的人讨论我的工作。”对于随意地在网上发表如此重要的问题的解答可 能带来的风险，例如证明或有纰漏而使他蒙羞，甚至被他人纠正而失去成果的优先权，佩雷尔曼表示：“如果我错了而有人利用我的工作给出正确的证明，我会很高 兴。我从来没有想成为庞加莱猜想的唯一破解者。”田刚在MIT收到了佩雷尔曼的电子邮件，立即意识到其重要性。他开始阅读并同他的同事们讨论这篇文章。
11月19日，几何学家Kapovitch在电子邮件中询问佩雷尔曼：“我是否理解正确：你在哈密尔顿的纲要中已经可以做足够多的步骤使你能解决几何化猜想？”佩雷尔曼第二天的回答只有一句话：“这是正确的。”
田刚写信给佩雷尔曼邀请他到MIT作演讲。普林斯顿和石溪分校的同事们也发出类似邀请。佩雷尔曼全部接受了，并于2003年4月开始在美国做巡回演讲。数学家们和新闻界都把这看作一件大事。使他感到失望的是，哈密尔顿没有参加这些报告会。
佩雷尔曼告诉我们，“我是哈密尔顿的门徒，虽然还没有得到他的认可。”当哥伦比亚大学的John Morgan邀请他去演讲时他同意了，因为他希望在那里能见到哈密尔顿。演讲会在一个星期天早上举行，哈密尔顿迟到了，并且在会后的讨论和午餐中没有提任 何问题。“我的印象是他只读了我的文章的第一部分。”佩雷尔曼说。
到2003年的7月，佩雷尔曼已经在网上公布了他的后两篇文章。数学家们开始对他的证明艰苦地进行检验和说明。在美国至少有两组专家承担了这一任务：田刚 （丘成桐的对手）和Morgan；还有密西根大学的两位专家。克莱研究所对他们都给与资助，并计划把田和Morgan的工作以书的形式出版。这本书除了为 数学家们提供佩雷尔曼的证明的逻辑外，还是佩雷尔曼能够获得克莱研究所一百万美元奖金的依据。
2004年9月10日，在佩雷尔曼回到圣彼得堡一年多后，他收到田刚发来的一封很长的电子邮件，田在其中写道：“我想我们已经理解了你的文章，它完全正 确。”佩雷尔曼没有回信。他向我们解释，“人们需要时间去适应这个有名的问题不再是猜想这样一个事实。。。。。重要的是我不去影响这个过程。”
2003年春天，丘成桐召集中山大学的朱熹平和他的一个学生，里海大学的曹怀东，承担解释佩雷尔曼的证明的工作。丘还安排朱在2005-06学年访问哈佛 大学，在一个讨论班上讲解佩雷尔曼的证明并继续与曹一起写他们的文章。2006年4月13日，《亚洲数学杂志》编委会的31位数学家收到丘成桐和另一位共 同主编的电子邮件，通知他们在3天内对丘打算在杂志上发表的朱熹平和曹怀东的一篇文章发表意见，题目是“瑞奇流的哈密尔顿-佩雷尔曼理论:庞加莱和几何化 猜想”。电子邮件没有包含这篇文章，评审报告或者摘要。至少一位编委要求看这篇文章，却被告知无法得到。4月16日曹收到了丘的邮件告诉他文章已被接受， 摘要已在杂志的网站公布。一个多月后，朱和曹的文章的题目在《亚洲数学杂志》的网页上被改成“庞加莱和几何化猜想的一个完整证明：瑞奇流的哈密尔顿-佩雷 尔曼理论的应用”。摘要也被修改了，新加的一句话说，“这一证明应看作为瑞奇流的哈密尔顿-佩雷尔曼理论的最高成就”。
朱和曹的文章中说，他们不得不“用基于自己研究的新方法取代佩雷尔曼的几处关键步骤，因为我们不能理解他的本来的推理，而这些推理对几何化纲领的完成是要 紧的。”熟悉佩雷尔曼证明的数学家不同意朱和曹对于庞加莱猜想做出重要新贡献的说法。Morgan说：“佩雷尔曼已经做了证明，这个证明是完整和正确的。 我看不出他们做了什么不同的事情。”
两位作者到达圣彼得堡后经历了一番曲折才见到佩雷尔曼。佩雷尔曼反复说他已经退出了数学界，不再认为自己是职业数学家了。他提到多年前他同一位合作者就如 何评价某个作者的一项工作所发生的争执。他说他对于学界松懈的道德规范感到非常沮丧。“不是那些违背道德标准的人被看作异类，”他说，“而是象我这样的人 被孤立起来。”当被问及他是否看过曹和朱的文章时，他回答“我不清楚他们做了什么新贡献。显然朱没有十分明白那些推理而又重新做了一遍。”至于丘成桐，佩 雷尔曼说，“我不能说我被侵犯了。还有人做得比这更糟。当然，许多数学家多少是诚实的，可他们几乎都是和事佬。他们容忍那些不诚实的人。”获得菲尔兹奖的 前景迫使他同他的职业彻底决裂。“只要我不出名，我还有选择的余地，”佩雷尔曼解释说，“或者做一些丑事，”-----对于数学界缺乏正义感大惊小怪-- ---“或者不这样做而被当作宠物。现在，我变得非常有名了，我不能再做宠物而不说话。这就是为什么我要退出。”当被问及，他拒绝了菲尔兹奖，退出了数学 界，是否意味着他排除了影响数学界的任何可能性时，他生气地回答“我不是搞政治的。”佩雷尔曼不愿回答他是否也会拒绝克莱研究所的百万美元奖金的问题。 “在颁发奖金之前我不作决定，”他说。Gromov说他能理解佩雷尔曼的逻辑。“你要做伟大的工作就必须有一颗纯洁的心。你只能想数学。其他一切都属于人 类的弱点。”尽管人们会把他拒绝接受菲尔兹奖视为一种傲慢，Gromov说，他的原则值得钦佩。“理想的科学家除科学之外不关心其他的事情。他希望生活在 那样理想的境界。虽然他做不到，但他希望那样。”
2．丘成桐
今年6月20日，几百名参加国际弦理论会议的物理学家聚集于北京友谊宾馆的一个讲堂，聆听中国数学家丘成桐演讲。丘在上世纪70代末作出了一系列突破性工 作，帮助物理学家发动了弦理论革命，他也因此获得了菲尔兹奖，并在数学界和物理学界享有盛誉。此后他成为哈佛数学教授，同时是北京和香港两所数学研究所的 所长。丘演讲的题目是庞加莱猜想，一个已有百年历史的关于3维球面的难题。丘向听众描述他的两个学生，朱熹平和曹怀东如何在几个星期前完成了庞加莱猜想的 一个证明。“我对于朱和曹的工作非常肯定，”丘成桐说，“中国数学家有理由为完全解决这个难题的巨大成功而骄傲。”他说朱和曹很感谢他的长期合作者哈密尔 顿。哈密尔顿应当获得解决猜想的大部分功劳。他也提到佩雷尔曼，说他作出了一个重要贡献。然而，丘成桐说，“在佩雷尔曼的工作中，许多证明的关键思想只是 被简略地描述，完整的细节常常被省略。”当佩雷尔曼在美国向哈密尔顿请教的时候，丘成桐也在问他有关瑞奇流的问题。丘同哈密尔顿在70年代就相识并成为关 系密切的朋友。
1980年丘成桐30岁，他成为普林斯顿高等研究院永久成员的最年轻的数学家之一。那时陈省身已经70岁，快要退休了。据陈的一位亲属讲，“丘成桐认为他将是下一个有名的中国数学家，陈省身该退位了。”
丘成桐开始举办讨论班，以利于与同事和学生的合作。他常和一些极富创造性的数学家，如Richard Schoen,William Meeks等合作。但是他对哈密尔顿却更加看重，或因其狂妄而富有想象力。
丘确信哈密尔顿能够用瑞奇流方程解决庞加莱和几何化猜想，他怂恿他专注于这个问题。两人的一个共同朋友说，“遇到丘成桐改变了哈密尔顿的数学人生。这是他 第一次做一个巨大的问题。同丘的谈话给了他勇气和方向。”丘成桐相信，如果他能帮助解决庞加莱猜想那将不仅是他本人也是中国的胜利。90年代中，丘和其他 一些中国学者会见了江泽民，讨论如何重建被文化革命破坏的科学机构。丘劝说一位香港的房地产大老板捐资建立了在北京中国科学院的一个数学中心，还设立一个 类似菲尔兹的奖项用以奖励45岁以下的中国数学家。他多次在中国把哈密尔顿，他与哈密尔顿关于瑞奇流的共同工作，以及庞加莱作为年轻中国数学家的学习榜 样。
丘成桐并不知道哈密尔顿在庞加莱猜想上的工作已处于停顿。他对于他在数学界，特别是在中国数学界的地位越来越感到焦虑。他担心一个年轻的学者会在中国取代 他成为陈省身的继承人。他证明的上一个大结果已经是在十多年前了。石溪分校的几何学家Anderson说，“丘想要做几何界的国王。他相信一切都应当出自 于他。他不喜欢别人侵入他的领地。”丘成桐决心要重新建立他的控制地位，他让他的学生向大问题进攻。他在哈佛举办的微分几何讨论班每周3次，每次3小时。
他让他的学生研究新发表的一些工作，给与新的证明，找出错误并填补漏洞。他向学生们强调步步严密的重要。在数学中有两种办法来取得原创性的成果。第一种是 给出原始的证明。第二种是发现别人证明中的严重错误，并提供补救的办法。然而，只有真正的数学漏洞-----推理中的遗漏或错误-----才是补救者宣告 原创性的基础。为证明提供说明的空缺------为使证明精炼而作的简化和省略--- --并不算数。有些时候数学漏洞和说明的空缺并不容易辨别。至少有一次，丘成桐和他的学生把两者搞混了。
1996年，伯克莱的一位青年几何学家，名叫Alexander Givental,证明了一个关于镜像对称的猜想。虽然别的数学家很难看懂他的证明，他们对于他的证明的完整和正确都很乐观。1997 年秋，丘成桐以前的学生刘克峰在哈佛做镜像对称的演讲。据当时在场的两位几何学家讲，刘给出的证明同Givental的证明惊人地相似，而该证明是丘，刘 以及丘的另一学生合作的一篇文章。“刘只是在列出于此问题有关的一长串名字中提到了Givental。”（刘坚持说他的证明与Givental有极大不 同。）几乎同时，Givental收到丘成桐的一封邮件，说他们无法看懂他的文章，所以自己写了一篇；在赞扬他有卓越思想后，丘表示在他们的文章中将会提 及Givental的重要贡献。几个星期后，丘成桐等人的文章在他担任主编的《亚洲数学杂志》上发表。在文章中丘成桐等说自己的证明是“第一个完整的证 明”。Givental只是顺便被提及。他的证明，他们在文章中写道，“很不幸，是不完整的。”然而他们并没有指出Givental证明中有什么数学漏 洞。几个月后，芝加哥大学一位年轻数学家，应他的资深同事的请求查明双方的争执，结论是Givental的证明是完整的。丘现在说，他和他的学生对此问题 已工作多年，他们取得了独立于Givental的结果。“我们有自己的想法，我们把它们写了出来。”
也在这段时间，丘成桐与陈省身以及中国数学会发生了第一次严重的对立。多年来陈省身希望把国际数学家联盟的大会放到中国来开。丘成桐却在最后时刻进行努 力，要把会议地点搬到香港。但是他没有能说服足够多的同事支持他的动议，国际数学家联盟最后决定于2002年在北京召开大会。（丘否认他曾企图把大会搬到 香港。）国际数学家联盟还指定田刚，丘成桐最成功的学生，加入遴选演讲人的一个小组。北京的组织委员会则推举田刚做大会报告。
丘成桐被惊呆了。他采取了报复措施，组织了他的第一次弦论会议，就在国际数学家大会开幕的前几天在北京召开。他请来了霍金和几位诺贝尔奖得主，甚至于安排 了他们同江泽民会面。据一位当时协助筹办数学家大会的数学家描述，在通往机场的高速路上“到处树立着有霍金照片的广告牌。”那个夏天丘成桐没有太多去想庞 加莱，他对哈密尔顿很有信心。然后，在2002年11月12日，他收到了佩雷尔曼的邮件，请他注意他的文章。佩雷尔曼宣告他的结果给了哈密尔顿和丘成桐沉 重打击。“我们觉得没有别人能发现解答，”丘成桐在北京告诉我们，“可是佩雷尔曼在2002年说他发表了一个东西。基本上他只做了个简略的东西，没有象我 们那样作出所有详细的估计。”而且，丘还抱怨佩雷尔曼的证明“写的一塌糊涂，我们无法搞懂。”
2003年4月18日出版的《科学》刊登了一篇文章，丘成桐在其中表示对佩雷尔曼的证明有所保留，指出很多专家对于如何控制“手术”的次数没有把握。“这可能是个致命的纰漏。”丘警告说。
2004年12月陈省身去世。丘成桐为了保证是他，而不是田刚，成为陈省身的接班人而作的努力开始变本加厉。“这都是为了他们在中国称王和在海外中国人中的领导权，”普林斯顿数学系的前系主任Jesoph Kohn说，“丘成桐不嫉妒田的数学，他嫉妒他在中国的影响力。”
次年夏天丘成桐回到中国，在一系列对中国记者的访谈中攻击田刚和北京大学的数学家们。在一份北京出版的科技报纸以“丘成桐痛斥中国学术腐败”为题的文章 中，丘成桐称田刚为“糟透了。”他指责他到处任职，只在国内大学工作几个月却收取十二万伍千美元，而当地的学生每月只能靠一百美元为生。他还指控田剽窃， 强迫他的研究生在他们的论文中加上他的名字。在另一次访谈中，丘成桐描述了菲尔兹奖委员会在1998年是如何淘汰田刚的，还有他曾怎样为了田刚游说各种评 奖委员会，包括美国科学基金会的一个委员会，它在1994年奖励了田刚50万美元。对于丘的攻击田刚感到非常震惊。但是他觉得自己是丘从前的学生，无法对 他的攻击有所作为。“他的指控是没有根据的”，田刚告诉我们。但是他补充说“我有很深的中国文化根基。老师就是老师，是要尊重的。我想不出我该怎么做。”
到了2006年6月初，丘成桐开始公开宣扬曹和朱的证明。6月3日，他在北京他的数学中心举行了一次新闻发布会。中心的常务副主任试图解释曾在庞加莱猜想 问题上工作过的数学家们的贡献的比例，他说，“哈密尔顿的贡献超过百分之五十；佩雷尔曼大约百分之二十五；而中国人，丘成桐，朱熹平，和曹怀东等大约百分 之三十。”（显然，简单的加法有时候也会难倒人，哪怕他是数学家。）丘成桐补充说，“考虑到庞加莱猜想的重要性，中国数学家起了30％作用绝非易事。这是 非常重要的贡献。”就在丘成桐作庞加莱猜想的演讲的那天早上他对我们说，“我们希望我们的贡献被理解。这也是出于鼓励朱熹平的策略，他在中国做出了真正了 不起的工作。我的意思是，有一个世纪历史的问题上的重要工作，可能还会有几个世纪的影响。只要你以任何方式加上你的名字，那就是贡献。”
3．数学家们的评论
E.T.Bell是《数学人物》一书的作者，该书是1937年出版的数学史的诙谐之作。他曾经对“玷污科学史的优先权之争”发出悲叹。1881年，庞加莱 与德国数学家克莱因之间发生过一次争执。庞加莱在他的几篇论文中把一类函数用数学家福克斯的名字予以命名，克莱因在给庞加莱的信中指出，他本人和其他的人 对这些函数做过重要工作。在两人的书信往来中，庞加莱在这个问题上最后引用了哥德的《浮士德》里的一句话：“Nameist Schallund Rauch”。粗略地翻译，这对应于莎士比亚的话，“名字里面究竟有什么呢？”这
实际上也是丘成桐的朋友们问他们自己的话。“我发现我对于丘好像是贪得无厌地追求荣誉开始不高兴，”MIT的DanStrook说。“这家伙做过辉煌的事 情，也为此得到了辉煌的荣誉。他拿到了所有的奖。在这个问题上他好象也想捞一把，我感到这有点卑劣。”Strook指出，二十五年前丘成桐的处境和今天的 佩雷尔曼非常类似。他的最有名的卡拉比－丘流形的结果对理论物理极为重要。“卡拉比提出了纲领，”Strook说，“在某种意义上丘成桐就是卡拉比的佩雷 尔曼。现在他站到另一边去了。他拿了卡拉比－丘的大部分功劳一点也不内疚。然而现在他好象在怨恨佩雷尔曼得到完成汉密尔顿纲领的功劳。”数学比其他学科更 依赖于合作。大多数问题的解决需要集中几位数学家的见识，这个职业已经衍生出一套标准来分配每个人的贡献所应得的功劳，其严谨程度就象统治数学的严密性一 样。正如佩雷尔曼所说，“如果每个人都诚实，与他人分享思想是自然的事。”很多数学家把丘成桐在庞加莱猜想上的所作所为视为违反了这个基本道德规范，忧虑 它给这一职业造成的危害。“政治，权势和支配力在我们数学界里没有合法地位，它们会危及我们这个领域的诚实与公正，”Phillip Griffiths说。[译者注：Phillp Griffiths在普林斯顿高等研究院做过十三年主任。]
The New Yorker, August 28, 2006
Annals of Mathematics
Manifold Destiny
A legendary problem and the battle over who solved it.
By Sylvia Nasar and David Gruber
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060828fa_fact2 引用第10楼kee53于2006-08-27 13:49发表的“”:
相关中文稿
Tommy Lee来稿/《纽约人》（New Yorker）杂志2006年8月28日最新的一期刊载了长篇文章“流形的命运求求传奇问题以及谁是破解者之争”（MANIFOLDDESTINY--- A legendary problem and the battle over who solved it）。文章作者之一SylviaNasar是哥伦比亚大学新闻系讲座教授，曾入围最后一轮普利策奖，《美丽心灵》一书的作者。另一位作者是David Gruber。
文章作者通过大量采访报道了数学界围绕庞加莱猜想和几何化猜想的争论，其中着墨最多的是两位数学家。一位是因破解两个猜想而闻名于世的俄罗斯数学家佩雷尔 曼；另一位是挑起争论的美籍华裔数学家丘成桐。文章有一幅插图，巧妙地点明了本文主题：图中佩雷尔曼站立着占据了画面的一大半，脖子上挂着一枚菲尔兹奖 章；而左下角的丘成桐板着面孔用手牢牢抓住那枚奖章。以下是对原文的摘要编译稿，其中的“我们”均指原文的两位作者。
.......
估计这个记者会写一本书,赚钱:) 引用第9楼yc771125于2006-08-27 13:48发表的“”:
无论如何，邱成桐已经成为小丑。
他忘了，中国人善于挖更索底，忘了揭别人的短之前要把自己的尾巴藏好。
自古，恶人先告状的，还真不少，科学家犯浑，还真不少。
.......
这位兄弟列举的关于爱因斯坦和霍金的科学史严重失实.:) 引用第9楼yc771125于2006-08-27 13:48发表的“”:
无论如何，邱成桐已经成为小丑。
他忘了，中国人善于挖更索底，忘了揭别人的短之前要把自己的尾巴藏好。
自古，恶人先告状的，还真不少，科学家犯浑，还真不少。
.......
你码出这些字是不是想表明一下你彩色的道德优越感？
如果如此，我只能窃笑 引用第12楼长歌－废墟于2006-08-27 14:13发表的“”:
这位兄弟列举的关于爱因斯坦和霍金的科学史严重失实.:)
如此，请将，实况告人？
不想钻入论战。
历史上，那些大师为了保固自己的宗师地位，压制、拉拢、利用新进，毫不稀奇。
尤其是，数学家是吃青春饭的。理科，和工科，就是这点差别。
以上。 坚决支持丘先生，国内学术腐败已经到了必须整治的时刻！ 引用第13楼hooker于2006-08-27 14:19发表的“”:
你码出这些字是不是想表明一下你彩色的道德优越感？
如果如此，我只能窃笑
自信和高傲，只有很少的差异，识别的人，也是。
如果带上情绪，那就是被考察者的不幸了。
然而，风不因墙而消失。风，始终在刮。
只是，风，还是，讽，抑或，疯，由它去。
世人，终有说话的权利。
我也是一个论坛的总版，我从没有有这种高慢的神态，来回会员的帖子。
请自重为好。算是苦药。
回思想之帖，要约束情绪。一如上贴。
回情绪之帖，只好还以颜色。（我还没想在书馆里做版主，幸甚幸甚。）
以上。 引用第15楼hitboy于2006-08-27 14:52发表的“”:
坚决支持丘先生，国内学术腐败已经到了必须整治的时刻！
国内学术腐败已经到了无法整治的时刻，大家还是省点力气吧！ 引用第14楼yc771125于2006-08-27 14:47发表的“”:
自信和高傲，只有很少的差异，识别的人，也是。
如果带上情绪，那就是被考察者的不幸了。
然而，风不因墙而消失。风，始终在刮。
只是，风，还是，讽，抑或，疯，由它去。
世人，终有说话的权利。。
上面这些话正可以被用在对下面的话的评论上
引用第9楼yc771125于2006-08-27 13:48发表的“”:
无论如何，邱成桐已经成为小丑。
他忘了，中国人善于挖更索底，忘了揭别人的短之前要把自己的尾巴藏好。
自古，恶人先告状的，还真不少，科学家犯浑，还真不少。
但，他要和牛顿（微积分发明之争），爱因斯坦（晚年的所谓科技研究），郭沫若（从文人学者到政治动物的蜕变），霍金（自认错误的宇宙猜想）等等，简直不可等量齐观。
甚至，他连杨振宁也不如了。
兄弟，你做的，世界上没几个人懂你。满好至少你活着的时候，可以获得足够的财富和虚名，又何必搞得大家看你的猴子红屁股。
国内的问题，大家都知道一点，但你的，我们恐怕才知道。
很好很好。
狗咬狗，一嘴毛。
首先:爱因斯坦晚年主要研究的是统一场论——只有两次他回到了经典的广义相对论方面，没有什么“所谓的科技研究”，第二：霍金的“宇宙猜想”指什么？这个要楼上兄弟自己告诉我了，物理中与“宇宙”两个字有关的最著名的大概是两个：“宇宙学原理”和“宇宙监督者”猜想，这两个都和霍金没关系，没听说过有“宇宙猜想”过。
第三：“数学家是吃青春饭的。”这句话只能说大致上没错，但例外也不少，比如爱因斯坦做出最后一项重大发现时他也已经46岁了，谈不上青春了，Feynman做出超流体的贡献的时候也已经40岁了，而 Ｓchordinger做出波动方程的时候正好39岁，事实上E·T Bell在他著名的《数学大师》一书中说过“除去意外因素，数学家是在智力上最长寿的人群之一”。高斯研究曲面理论的时候已经是1820年代以后，他也已经是40多岁的人了（至少是43岁了）；就说Poincare意外去世的时候59岁“正处于创造力的顶峰”（《数学大师》）