This “beggar” (or perhaps homeless?) in the photographs (in the Moscow metro) is called Grigori Yakovlevich Perelman. He is probably the greatest living mathematician and geometer – certainly for half, the western hemisphere of the planet. In 1982, at the age of 16, he won the gold medal at the international mathematical olympiad. Born and raised in Leningrad, he soon passed through various American universities, but preferred to return to his homeland. His work in Riemannian geometry and topology made him internationally famous. Until in 2002 and 2003, with three of his articles, he proved the validity of the “Poincaré conjecture” which had remained unsolved for a century, considered as one of the most difficult mathematical problems – one of the seven unsolved “millennium mathematics problems”…
For this solution, Perelman was awarded not once but three times: once with the “Fields Medal,” which is considered the equivalent of a Nobel Prize in mathematics, and another from the European Mathematical Society. In addition, he was awarded a prize of one million dollars in 2010…
He didn’t take anything… Neither awards, nor money. «Money or fame don’t interest me…» he stated accordingly. «… I don’t want to be displayed like an animal in a zoo»…
Animal? In a zoo? Something wanted to say Perelman (and he said it suggestively) about the “scientific communities” of various specialties in modern capitalism. And he is not wrong, nor is he crazy. It is extremely unlikely, at the limits of statistical error, to find today a “scientist” (or some specialized idiot to remember the Establishment…) who is not ready to be sold for money and glory, more the former. Perelman is this statistical error: hostile to “scientific ethics”, whether that of the lamogio, or that of those who tolerate the lamogia making selfish calculations. Hostile, also, to mental projection…
What he does and what he deals with today is generally unknown. He lives in Leningrad, though. And there (it is said that) various young men and women circulate wearing T-shirts with his face and the slogan: not everything is for sale…
To be ghosts from a lost past? Or from the future?