Grigorij Perelman is quite an interesting figure, and I’ve recently recalled his story again. This Russian mathematician was awarded the Fields Medal in 2006 for proving the Poincaré Conjecture, but what he did was truly different—he didn’t publicize his results with the fanfare that other winners did.

What is the Poincaré Conjecture? Simply put, it is a problem about three-dimensional space. Imagine a closed three-dimensional space: if it has no penetrating holes, then it is essentially equivalent to a three-dimensional sphere. This assumption perplexed mathematicians for nearly a hundred years. Grigorij Perelman ultimately solved it using Ricci flow and geometric topology methods, becoming the only person among the seven Millennium Prize Problems to have had them solved so far.

But his approach really was unique. He didn’t organize any press conferences, didn’t give speeches everywhere, and didn’t even submit his work to traditional academic journals. Between 2002 and 2003, Perelman directly posted a series of papers on arXiv—a preprint server that mathematicians can access freely. He explained his proof in detail and simply waited for mathematicians around the world to verify it.

Verification took several years because the proof was truly too complex. The entire mathematical community carefully checked his work. In 2010, for this achievement, he received the Millennium Prize from the Clay Mathematics Institute and a $1 million bonus. But here is the craziest part—Grigorij Perelman refused all these honors and money. He once said a famous line: “Why do I need awards and money when I know how to manage the world?”

Starting around 2005, he completely left the academic world. He didn’t attend academic conferences, didn’t publish new research, and didn’t work at a university. Now, Grigorij Perelman lives in Saint Petersburg and leads a fairly reclusive life. Someone captured a photo of him at a supermarket—he was buying cheap food and paying in cash. He is not married, has no children, and is said to live in an apartment in Saint Petersburg with his mother. He rarely appears on the streets and is unwilling to talk to reporters.

He explained that the reason he withdrew from academia was disappointment with the way the mathematics community is organized, along with having no interest at all in fame and wealth. Such a choice really is rare in modern society.