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Perfect Rigor: A Genius and the Mathematical Breakthrough of the Century |  | Author: Masha Gessen
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
List Price: $26.00
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Seller: sbgoddard
Rating:  36 reviews
Sales Rank: 8281
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 256
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.1 x 1
ISBN: 015101406X
Dewey Decimal Number: 510.92
EAN: 9780151014064
ASIN: 015101406X
Publication Date: November 11, 2009 (New: Last 30 Days)
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Product Description
In 2006, an eccentric Russian mathematician named Grigori Perelman solved one of the world’s greatest intellectual puzzles. The Poincare conjecture is an extremely complex topological problem that had eluded the best minds for over a century. In 1998, the Clay Institute in Boston named it one of seven great unsolved mathematical problems, and promised a million dollars to anyone who could find a solution. Perelman will likely be awarded the prize this fall, and he will likely decline it. Fascinated by his story, journalist Masha Gessen was determined to find out why. Drawing on interviews with Perelman’s teachers, classmates, coaches, teammates, and colleagues in Russia and the US—and informed by her own background as a math whiz raised in Russia—she set out to uncover the nature of Perelman’s genius. What she found was a mind of unrivalled computational power, one that enabled Perelman to pursue mathematical concepts to their logical (sometimes distant) end. But she also discovered that this very strength has turned out to be his undoing: such a mind is unable to cope with the messy reality of human affairs. When the jealousies, rivalries, and passions of life intruded on his Platonic ideal, Perelman began to withdraw—first from the world of mathematics and then, increasingly, from the world in general. In telling his story, Masha Gessen has constructed a gripping and tragic tale that sheds rare light on the unique burden of genius.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 36
 Insightful and informative look at a genius November 20, 2009
Sreeram Ramakrishnan (Salem,MA)
Despite the fact that the biographical sketch drawn by the author is handicapped by the use of second-hand information and perhaps the author's own biases, Gessen provides an engaging, informative and entertaining look at one of the geniuses in recent history. In many aspects, the narration and the structure of the book reminded me of another engaging book - A Brilliant Darkness: The Extraordinary Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Ettore Majorana, the Troubled Genius of the Nuclear Age. While the relentless pursuit of logic for its own sake and the unending quest for the most elegant proof may only be fully appreciated by readers with a strong academic bent, the discussion of the Russian system facilitating such genius's development is quite informative. Despite the difficulties in understanding the nuances of the academic field itself, the reader is left pondering on the vagaries and sometimes dichotomous nature of human behavior, especially when it comes to geniuses such as the appearance of ego at the least required circumstances(Perelman's interviews for academic positions); in the end, one just marvels at what the human mind can do, whether or not Gissen thinks of Perelman as suffering from Asperger's Syndrome as if that has anything to do with genius.
A fascinating biography of a genius November 19, 2009
Jojoleb (Pittsburgh, PA United States)
Perfect Rigor by Masha Gessen is a book about the reclusive genius and Russian mathematician, Grigori Perelman, who solved the supposedly unsolvable--a one hundred year old mathematics problem called the Poincare Conjecture. More puzzlingly, he posted the answer on a mathematics website, never formally publishing his proof, and when finally offered the most prestigious, million-dollar prize in mathematics, Perleman turned it down and went into hiding.
Gessen, a former mathematician turned journalist, took upon herself the daunting task of writing a biography about a living person who now refuses to communicate with the outside world. Reading more like an extended article in the Atlantic Monthly or New Yorker Magazine, Gessen sheds more light on the former Soviet Union's method of training mathematicians than she can on a deeper understanding of Perelman himself. Even so, the book gives the reader a fascinating look at the training of Soviet, cold war mathematicians and the politics behind mathematicians.
The book was engaging cover to cover. Through interviews with Perelman's fellow mathematicians, former associates, and teachers Gessen is able to eek out a slim biography. Gessen spends a fair amount of time discussing the development of mathematics education and the ruthlessly competitive system in the USSR that was used to train Perelman. Although great mathematicians have a reputation for being abstruse and eccentric, Gessen does a great job of describing the fascinating (and occasionally flamboyant) characters that comprised the Soviet mathematics community. She also describes how discrimination, intrigue and politics that could hamper a student's progress through this system.
Perelman's character is fleshed out through the eyes of his fellow students, colleagues, mathematics coach, and teachers. What is very clear is that even people close to him have very little insight into what makes him tick. There is a lot of admiration for Perelman's resolve, his ability to look at problems in a very different way, and his focused intelligence. But as Perleman shared so little of his personal thoughts with others, few have insights as to exactly how he thought things out in his head or knew him well enough to give Perleman a more human dimension. The interviewees in some ways give us more insight into themselves than they do into Perleman. Gessen, however, successfully weaves these accounts together into a coherent story of Perleman's rise and subsequent fall into obscurity. The writing is journalistic in style but never dull.
I believe Gessen makes a major slip when she devotes an entire chapter to pinning Perelman's reclusive and eccentric behavior to a psychiatric diagnosis. It is possible that Perelman suffers from Asperger syndrome (in brief, a functional type of autism), but without actual psychiatric testing I believe that Gessen is going out on a very shaky limb here.
Given his upbringing and the pressures of his training, it is not clear to me how much of Perelman's behavior was due to nurture rather than nature. It also seems unfair to assume that someone with incredible intellectual gifts, such as Perleman, but who is an extremely private person, must have a diagnosable psychiatric condition. It took two years for the rest of the mathematics community to figure out Perelman's solution to the Poincare Conjecture. Assuming that someone was actually close to Perelman, it might take even longer for them to understand his goals and motivations. Attributing a psychiatric diagnosis in this case is a bit like psychoanalyzing historic figures, except in Perelman's case we may even have less concrete information.
Interestingly, it took Gessen quite some time before spending a chapter explaining exactly what the Poincare Conjecture is and after she described it, it was quite apparent why. Gessen has a bit of a leg up here, given that she is a former mathematician. Although I was able to follow her description well enough, I found Wikipedia's explanation to be somewhat more brief and easy to understand. I still have only the most basic understanding of the conjecture and have not a clue of even the rudimentary mechanics by which a mathematician would solve it. That being said, no knowledge of mathematics is required to enjoy this book.
The Loneliness of Genius November 18, 2009
Jeffrey A. Veyera (Matthews, NC United States)
No one is lonelier than the true genius, and rare is the true genius lonelier than the mathematical genius.
Grigory Perelman is a first-rate mathematical genius whose unique mind unraveled the Poincare Conjecture, a topological problem which had stymied top minds for over a century. Masha Gessen, no slouch herself, undertook to understand how he did it and why he will not accept the $1 million prize for doing so. In the process, we learn the tragic limitations of genius: living in a world among those who will never understand you, bound by the only rules you understand----those you set for yourself.
Perelman is the closest humanity has come to producing an Ayn Rand archetype. He doesn't undertake problem-solving for the glory, for the money, or for the fame---he simply follows his intellectual interest, and once a problem is solved to his satisfaction, moves on.
Geshen is perhaps too ready to psychoanalyze Perelman from afar---she didn't succeed in getting an interview with him---and the book unfortunately has a little too much of the therapeutic in it for my taste. Perelman is only a tragic figure by our lights---by his own, he set out to conquer mathematics and succeeded. He is one of the fortunate few who realized a lifelong ambition and moved on to other pursuits.
One need not be mentally defective in order to appreciate that, nor even to classify such as a life well-lived.
 Fascinating November 17, 2009
Margaret Dybala (Pearland, Texas United States)
This is a remarkable story about the genius who gave us the solution to the Poincare Conjecture. This man, Grigory Perelman is one of those rare, utterly brilliant and focused minds that mathematics sometimes gives us. In the telling of this story, we also learn the history of Soviet math during the 20th century, which is an intriguing story on its own. The idea of the math clubs and math schools are amazing. What a wonderful opportunity for the kind of mind that loves math!
I agree, however, with the other reviewer who objected to the author's psychological analysis of Perelman. I don't know of any reputable psychologist or psychiatrist who would diagnose someone without actually meeting them. In the final analysis, I think that, even though the author also loves mathematics, she just doesn't understand someone like Perelman and the absolutely crystalline purity of his interest in math. He just wasn't interested in all the politics and money issues. I can fully understand that someone just might not find anything interesting outside of his field. It is his right; he surely earned it by his brilliance in achieving the greatest mathematical breakthrough of the last century!
Interesting if somewhat stereotypical biography November 15, 2009
Thornwell Simons (Columbia, SC United States)
In 2000, a one-million dollar prize was announced for the solutions to seven math problems that had eluded solutions for decades. To qualify, the solution had to be published in a refereed journal. In 2002, a Russian mathematician named Grigori Perelman posted a solution to one of them, the Poincare Conjecture, on the internet (i.e., not a journal). When the resulting media attention began to focus on him, he withdrew from society and eventually from professional mathematics entirely, and at this point has yet to even accept the million-dollar prize.
This book is a psychological study of Mr. Perelman and the personal history that has led him to both be the person who could solve a problem that no one else in a century could solve, and simultaneously the person who was incapable of accepting the recognition that came with his achievement.
I'm not a mathematician, and I'm not qualified to comment on the mathematical side of this story, but the author does do a very good job of explicating the internal Russian system that produced Perelman's genius and his unique focus. I give it four stars instead of five for two reasons:
1) It tells a somewhat stereotyped story -- Socially awkward geniuses who can't deal with normal human interaction are a fairly standard trope. The fact that it's apparently accurate here doesn't change that, and while the author does a good job of telling that story, it's a story I've heard before many times; I was hoping for a little more detail or complexity of character in this story.
2) The author was limited to gathering information from Perelman's former friends and associates, and was never able to speak with Perelman herself or gain more than a second-hand impression of his psychology. That's not the author's fault, but it still limits the portrait drawn.
In the end, this book presents an interesting portrait of the shaping of a mathematical genius, and how the same personality traits that made him able to solve such an advanced problem also prevented him from reaping the professional rewards of his success. It's an interesting read, with an especially good depiction of the world of Soviet mathematical competition during Perelman's childhood.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 36
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