THE first in a series of million-dollar prizes for solving mathematics problems has been turned down. Six million-dollar questions remain, but don鈥檛 hold your breath for winning claims.
Last week, the (CMI) announced that Grigori Perelman had turned down its award for his proof of the Poincar茅 conjecture.
The century-old puzzle is one of seven . Its solution was posted by Perelman in a series of papers in 2002 and 2003. 鈥淚t sort of came out of the blue,鈥� says CMI鈥檚 president, Jim Carlson.
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No work on the other puzzles has generated such a buzz, he says, and it could be decades before the next prize is won. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a bit like trying to predict an earthquake. We may even know where the hot zones are, but we certainly can鈥檛 predict when and where.鈥�
One of the biggest advances would be proof of the Riemann hypothesis, which concerns an elaborate function that seems to relate to the way prime numbers are distributed. Formulated in 1859, it is among the Millennium challenges with the longest heritage.