Talk:Grigori Perelman

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Contents

[edit] WP:V, WP:NOR, WP:NPOV

It is absurd to exclude the fact that Perelman is Jewish from this article. Nobody denies that there are good sources that say that he is Jewish (remembering that Judaism is an ethnicity as well as a religion), and nobody has produced a source that he isn't. We don't work by speculating about whether he would want it stated in the article that he is Jewish. No doubt, if he is such a private person, he would not want the article at all. Is anyone prepared to move for the deletion of the whole article? If not, it is a violation of WP:NPOV to require the removal of some verified facts and not others.--Newport 11:50, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

As an aside, Perelman said quite pointedly in his interview with the Telegraph that he doesn't care what anyone writes about him. Rklawton 17:07, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
I very much doubt that anybody here is willing to go check on his maternal line of descent in order to discern whether this alleged fact of "Jewishness" is true or not.
At any rate - how is this entire game of pinning labels about "facts"? The only fact here is that you are trying to pin a little symbol onto his shirt. This is not a fact about him any more than "fetch me this handbag" is a fact.
Judaism is a religion. Whether Perelman believes in it or practices it is his business. Now, just like (say) Catholicism states that somebody who has been baptized is a Catholic, Judaism also claims that certain people - namely, those born of mothers who belonged to Judaism - belong to the religion automatically. Does it have a right to make such a claim? Yes; you can have whatever religious beliefs you prefer. Should you publicly conscript third persons into membership in a religion? Should we make such categories a part of general public discourse? Obviously not.
Perelman's mathematics are everybody's business. Perelman's background is his business. Labels that presume to describe Perelman in absolute terms, and thus make both his life and his actual background (whatever it may be!) irrelevant, are noxious; if they are based on bloodlines - well, then they are abhorrent.
The fact that membership in the Jewish religion is sometimes overlayed with the notion of "nationality" makes matters only worse, not better. Let the man decide what country he belongs to; what country formed him is clear. Bellbird 12:46, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Nobody needs to check anything. We have a good source saying that he's Jewish and no source saying he isn't - end of discussion. Anything else is original research.--20.138.246.89 13:02, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

This sort of argumentation stinks to high heaven. Why should we let monomaniacs decide what is encyclopaedic and what is not? We usually do not. Moreover, the religion of living persons is not to be discussed unless they choose to make it public - that is certainly a clearly stated and very specific Wikipedia rule. Bellbird 13:24, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Incidentally, can anybody check up on all of these IP addresses? There have been plenty of anonymous reverts in the last few days; is somebody trying to get around the 3-revert rule? Bellbird 13:28, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Ethnicity includes self-identification. We don't have sources for that. Neither we have a source stating his religious beliefs. --Pjacobi 19:29, 1 September 2006 (UTC)


This is all nazi propaganda. Like just because your great ancestors worshiped some god then you are by some way different. If you were born in russia and your parents were born in russian and their parents were born in russia and so on then you are russian who cares what religion someone worhsiped. The only ones who care are the nazies. And the nazies got a BIG Soviet Flag placed in their capital, Berlin and hitler killed himself, and a pice of his skull was taken to Stalin and the skull is now in the Kreml. TheftByEating 00:34, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, but these assessments of your are no basis to remove properly sourced facts. The fact that he was born into a Jewish family was reported in the Daily telegraph, and that has absolutely nothing to do with Nazism. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 00:37, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
First of all reading any article about any person in wikipedia you will see that it does not say protstant Mike was born in... or catholic Sam was born in... So adding religion of parents is very doubtfull indeed and only serves as nazi propaganda. He was born in the Soviet Union where the was no religion so it is very doubtfull indeed to include such nazi propaganda. TheftByEating 03:15, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
 ????? ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 03:19, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
THERE WAS NO RELIGION IN THE SOVIET UNION SO HE CAN NOT BE "JEWISH" SINCE HE NEVER JOINED THE "JEWISH CHURCH" do you understand or is this to complicated for you. You are only a member of a religion if you join its church. In the Soviet Union everyone was born into NO church since he has not joined the jewish church he can not be jewish. And in all wikipedia articles it dosent say at the very top the religion of the persons parents. For example does it say Protestant or Catholic Bill Gates, I think not! TheftByEating 03:59, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
Not to discuss nationality in any way, like you are doing, but to correct an obvious error. There was a religion in the USSR, see Religion in the Soviet Union. I was born in the USSR in the 1970s and was baptised in the Russian Orthodox Church with no problems. Cmapm 10:11, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
Not to be too rude, but as others have attempted to point out Jewish has an ethnic/cultural/racial element to it (and I would think most secular Russian jews today would be quite surprised to be considered just "Russian"). In addition to the problem pointed out by Cmapm, please note that there is no such thing as "Jewish church" and the fact that you think there is indicates pretty fundamental misunderstandings of the topic. (For the record I have no strong opinion either way as to whether "Jewish" should be mentioned here, but these are basic facts that need correction). JoshuaZ 18:08, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
I agree with TheftByEating, in the Bill Gates article it just says Bill Gates not Bill Gates whos parents belonged to Religion X. And to get baptised the parents must actively do so where is the proof that Grigori Perelman parents did so. Ramand 13:22, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Let us also remember that three of the proponents for removing the reference to religion have less than 100 edits between them. We should note their point of view, place it in the over context of Wikipedia, and move on. If they should become disruptive, we have processes for dealing with that as well. We might start with investigating possible sock puppetry. Rklawton 16:02, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

As has been pointed out many times before in this discussion a simple bit of scrolling will show that in the vast majority of articles it does not say Name Last Name parents belonged to religion X it just says Name Last name. Adding such information serves no purpose what so ever and this has been pointed out also many other things have been pointed out like for example there is no proof that his parents were even jewish or that he is a member. And adding such information at the very top when in all other articles it is if mentioned at the bottom. Ramand 16:28, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
The vast majority of bios don't have sources that include the subject's religion in their title. This one does. Rklawton 17:11, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
In the vast majority of all articles there is no mention of the persons alleged religion. As has been stated before Where is the proof. Has he been baptazied, has he had a bar mitzvah if not then he is not jewish period. And why isnt the religion of Bill Gates, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon, and many others mentioned at the very top of the article? And there is only one link that says that he is jewish and this is from an internet page that itself says the name sounds jewish their is no real proof and even if he is why is it mentioned at all? In the Einstein article the religion of him is not mentioned at the very start at the very top of the article. Ramand 17:28, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Anyone who believes that you have to be baptised to be Jewish clearly doesn't understand the issue.--Newport 20:05, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Newport: you can believe that humanity is divided among Jews and Gentiles, whose respective status is determined at birth. That does not mean that, in the mainstream discourse, people should be defined and classified according to this categorization, or any other categorization by blood. If the rules you believe in determine a person's religion, then there is only more of a reason not to define the given person by rules of descent; the religion of living people is not to be discussed here, and, if we are imposing a religion on a person - a religion that may be different from the one he privately holds! - then this is only so much the worse.

If certain rules on privacy are being violated elsewhere, then they should be followed elsewhere, not violated here. On the matter of POV and NPOV, please see the comments I have just left on Runcorn's page. Bellbird 14:57, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Copyvio ?

Hi,

I have found an article about Perelman on an extern site (http://worldses.org/perelman/) that is very close to this one. I dont know if it is a copyvio or a GFDL violation, both cases are problematics. At first look, it seems to be a GFDL violation, because all the links on Wikipedia are in bold on the WESAS page.

The article is "A small contribution of the WSEAS Staff to GRIGORI PERELMAN", without any reference to Wikipedia or GFDL. Nojhan 17:02, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

It seems to be a GFDL violation. Please report it to meta:Non-compliant site coordination. Thanks. Mushroom (Talk) 17:14, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
You may also send them a Wikipedia:Standard GFDL violation letter. Mushroom (Talk) 17:16, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
I have sent them a GFDL violation letter and I'm waiting for an answer. Mushroom (Talk) 00:48, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
That website is now fully compliant with the GFDL :) Mushroom (Talk) 08:46, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WP:3RR warning

To involved editors: Please refrain from undoing other people's edits repeatedly. If you continue, you may be blocked from editing Wikipedia under the three-revert rule, which states that nobody may revert a single page more than three times in 24 hours. (Note: this also means editing the page to reinsert an old edit. If the effect of your actions is to revert back, it qualifies as a revert.) Thank you. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 21:59, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Continued removal of properly referenced material because of a POV assertion that it should be discounted is vandalism. 3RR does not apply to reversion of vandalism. Tyrenius 20:46, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
Actually, that's not vandalism. See Wikipedia:Vandalism. Disputes over content should be taken through the dispute resolution process. Fagstein 19:36, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removal of referenced material

Please note that the removal of properly referenced material, because of a POV that it doesn't count, amounts to vandalism and repetition of this behaviour will be treated as such. The verifiable reference given from The Daily Telegraph states:

Friends were not surprised to learn that he was living with his mother. The Jewish family - he has a younger sister, Elena, also a mathematician - was always close.

A verifiable reference will be needed to disprove this, if it is wished to delete the fact that he is a Jew. Even if he does not consider himself a Jew, that is still no reason to delete the statement, although it would be a reason to add his self-identification additionally to the article. That too would have to be properly referenced. If you don't understand this, I suggest you dialogue with me on my talk page, before you make an edit change, rather than after. Tyrenius 20:46, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

My statement has no bearing on whether this information should be in the lead section, or elsewhere. That is an entirely different discussion. Tyrenius 22:14, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

So far, I don't see anything about his alleged Judaism which makes it so important that it needs to be mentioned in the lede. In the Einstein article it is mentioned in the categories, and then further down under "Religion", but not in the lede. Making sure all Jews are marked as such is just ethnic form of nationalism. Ashibaka tock 14:25, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

The recent edit which moves the information from the lead to a personal section, seems to me to be a very sensible way of dealing with this. It also uses the words of the reference "Jewish family", so is accurate to that particular media perception. Please bear in mind in a collaborative project that different people with opposite positions on an edit decision have to find a way to accommodate each other. Tyrenius 15:37, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, with no other comments, that seems like an acceptable wording to me. Ashibaka tock 15:46, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

"No other comments" over an American holiday weekend is hardly a surprise. Be patient. Also keep in mind that a couple of articles list his religion in their headlines. Thus, the emphasis seems justified. Rklawton 19:13, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm fine with the current solution in the article for now. Whereas I question the relevance of listing religion and ethnicity in biographies with specific relevance, it seems to be the current practice in en.wikipedia. --Pjacobi 19:34, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Please see my comments above, and my comments in Runcorn's page on the issue of POVs. May I remind everybody that there is a standard rule here on (not) mentioning the religion of living people? The fact that members of some religions believe one can be born into them does not change the matter. Bellbird 15:00, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Incidentally: the criterion of verifiability is an excellent thing when it comes to statements of fact whose meaning we can agree on. However, there is no clear agreement in the popular press on who or what is a Jew. Given that this is the case, how is citing a source any better than citing one to support the statement that Perelman is a good or bad person? What are we even saying when we say he is a Jew? Bellbird 15:03, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

The Daily Telegraph is considered a reliable source, and we are citing from that reference, inmwhich they state that Perelman's family is Jewish. What is wrong with citing the telegraph? We are not passing a judgement is this is valid, important, sensible, better ot worse, we are describing what a reliable source wrote about him: "The Jewish family - he has a younger sister, Elena, also a mathematician - was always close.[1] ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 21:26, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
  1. It can be disputed, whether including religion or ethnicity (or hair color, height, haplotype) of scientists is really encyclopedic. It is not linked to the reason they are notable.
  2. The quote about the the "Jewish family" was used to construct Perelman himself as Jewish. This is now fixed.
Pjacobi 21:42, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Just a comment on your first point: once a person is notable, then other information about them becomes valid, which is not necessarily specifically to do with their notability. For example, their place of birth is probably nothing to do with their notability per se. Tyrenius 00:47, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Actually their place of birth has to do with what country they are, or were from. That's like saying the fact that he was born in Russia isn't relevant to anything. Even though he's probably one of several Field Medalists who wear a beard, I don't think "He has a beard." would be any more relevant that what religion his ancestors practiced, unless he identifies or practicies it too. There are plenty of pages without birth place locations anyway. LaGrange

[edit] More on "ethnicity"

(What you'll find below was a response I wrote a few hours ago to Tbeatty's comments further up the page. I originally posted it in the wrong talk page by mistake. My apologies. Bellbird 17:46, 4 September 2006 (UTC))

Dear Tbeatty:

You raise a very good point; we are being constrained by language. However, we are fated to write in English here, as it happens - and there is also a good reason why there is a single word for what sometimes seems to be separate concepts. The issue is that, according to some religions, one can be a member of a religion by virtue of one's birth or bloodlines. (In others, one's status may be determined shortly after birth, and changes may be very difficult; thus, for example, somebody baptised as a Roman Catholic would be seen as such by the Roman Catholic church even if he declared himself an atheist, or were to be excommunicated.) Many religions also state that membership in a religion is not simply a matter of belief, but also a matter of belonging to a clearly defined social body. There are secular Jewish nationalists nowadays - especially in Israel - who adhere strongly to the belief in a Jewish nation, with criteria of membership identical to those for the "holy people" defined by religion. An Israeli acquaintance of mine states matters in the following way: "Judaism is my religion, but I do not believe in it". Ethnicity is a different and much vaguer matter. Some immigrants to the United States in the early twentieth century shared certain ill-defined cultural traits that persisted for a time even after some abandoned the religion. (Nowadays, many of the cultural traits have disappeared even among practitioners of the religion; thus, for example, very few people outside some very specific groupings speak Yiddish.) It sometimes makes sense to speak of a culture; however, if one is truly thinking of a culture, and not of something else, then it becomes very difficult to speak of membership; one can be a carrier of a culture to a greater or less extent, but it is not a binary issue. Part of the problem here is that people are projecting onto a living individual categories that may be descriptive elsewhere or at some other time, but not necessarily there and now. One hundred and fifty years ago, practitioners of Judaism in Eastern Europe did indeed speak Yiddish and live separately from their neighbours. This is no longer the case. When categories lose their descriptive value, they become a way to classify human beings in absolute ways that may be severely misleading as to their actual (and private!) backgrounds. The point is not that Perelman is a non-Jew, whatever that means; the issue is whether or not it is proper for an encyclopaedia - in particular, this one - to classify living individuals by blood, in ways that, furthermore, impose on them some particular religion. I would agree that, say, Marc Chagall had a Yiddish background (as much as that involves some radical simplifications; one could just as well say that he came from a small-town Belorussian background). As one moves to the present, reality becomes vaguer, and firm categories sometimes become acts of violence against the individual and against reality. Mind you, I, for one, have no objection to private persons' belief in such categories; rather, the question is whether such categories should form part of the general discourse. Perhaps we should all talk about the matter in the village pump? There seems very little here that is specific to Grigori Perelman. As far as I can see, he is simply a person who does mathematics, lives in Russia, and happens to have a typically Russian first name and a last name often found among descendants of Russian Jews. Some people in the press jump to conclusions from this last fact. So what? Bellbird 16:04, 4 September 2006

[edit] References are fubared

I'm sure this is unintentional, but a number of citations (as webcites) were removed and ref tags now surround words like "Jackson." (see note 8). If the intention is to reference the Jackson, A. reference in the ref list, this was not done correctly. Since I'm not familiar with the article in its current state, I hesitate to fix these things as I assume they should direct/link/reference. Could someone go through and fix the ref tags so that everything is pointing to an actual reference and not just saying things like last names. A good place to start on how to go about doing this is the <ref> tag page on Wikimedia. Thanks. ju66l3r 16:41, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

All works cited, or used as a reference should be listed with complete bibliographic information in a "References" section, cites of those references works, whether inline (e.g. Harvard referencing), or in a note, do not need to repeat all of the bibliographic information, all that is really necessary is to give enough information to uniquely identify the cited work. So since there is only one work by the author "Jackson" listed in the "References" section, a citation of "Jackson" is sufficient. Paul August ☎ 21:48, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] POVs and not

Were we talking about whether (say) a tax break on gnus will encourage their reproduction, we would indeed be talking about a POV issue: we have a fact whose exact truth value cannot be determined, as so we present different opinions. Were we talking about (say) the viewpoints of Orthodox and Reform Judaism on "Who is a Jew?" or whether Christians, Jews and Muslims worship the same God, we would be talking about a different kind of POV issue, namely, one in which the ultimate answer may not even exist in any absolute sense; all that is left is to report POVs.

Here we have a different sort of issue. The problem at hand is not whether (say) Cantor and Grigori Perelman are Jewish. (An interesting hypothesis: what would happen if Grigori Perelman's mother turned out to be from a non-Jewish line of descent? Would the hubhub in these pages quiet down? What would we have learned of new about Perelman - his life, his actions, his character?) You see, it is not my wish, at the very least, to assert that they aren't, or to believe that they aren't. (Though: you are aware that no Jewish denomination would recognize Cantor as Jewish, and that all this business boils down, then, to issues of the racial pride of some chaps who believe they belong to a non-existent race?) The issue is whether biographical subjects should be defined in terms of bloodlines at all - in any way.

- A country of origin and a date of birth may be imperfect forms of definition as well, but, at least, they tell us something certain about the way in which an individual was formed - something certain that affected every moment of the upbringing. At the same time, because we are talking about something concrete, we have something that can be relativised. When people are classified by bloodlines, the inverse phenomenon occurs: we have something that may not have affected an individual's upbringing at all, or that may not even be a "something" - even if, later in the individual's life, a constructed "something" may have suddenly hit him. At the same time, we are implicitly or explicitly told, this "something" (or non-something) constitutes a valid way in which to classify humanity into two hermetic categories, each inaccessible to the other.

If bloodlines were an intellectually sound and moral way to classify individuals, we would have them in all articles. Thus, for example, we would have lists of Jewish bankers, Jewish Bolsheviks, Jewish spies and Jewish slave traders, to rattle off four categories often put together by fairly diseased individuals. Great criminals would also be defined, in their biographies, as being Jewish (or "from a Jewish family".) To make myself perfectly clear: I am not proposing that we keep such lists; if somebody does, I propose that he be vomited upon. This is simply a thought experiment.

Would it not be best to describe people simply in terms of their actions, prefaced by the most salient concrete features of their actual background? Would this not be fair to subjects and readers, and most informative?

Incidentally, stacking sources against each other wouldn't work here. It would be like deciding between noise and quiet by having both in actual proportions. This "compromise" would be especially unworkable if somebody showed up tooting a megaphone. Bellbird 10:40, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comments about “compromise” solution

While I appreciate user:Pjacobi's efforts in trying to find an agreeable compromise, I must disagree with the removal of the category, for that removes the incredible indexing power that this encyclopedia is supposed to bring. The debate over ethnicity vs. religion to the side, if the person is agreed to be Jewish, that should be an index key as much as being male, Russian, or a mathematician is. Removing the key destroys the information. Now, in cases where there is significant doubt as to ethnicity, I agree the key does not belong--it is not verified. But here in wiki, our overriding principle is verifiability, and not truth, as unfortunate as that may be, and if we have verified, reliable sources claiming such, it deserves to be a key as much as in the article. I do not believe they should be split. Thanks. -- Avi 16:20, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

It is not agreed, that Perelman is Jewish. No reliable source report selfidentification.
It is also not agreed, that these categorisation makes sense or should be done, except for the narrow case where the religion of a mathematican was a notable factor in his life, compare the criterium at Category:Christian mathematicians.
Pjacobi 21:07, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm going to make it really simple. If we have a category called "Russian Jews", we need reputable sources that say A. the person is Russian B. the person is Jewish. We have sources that state both, so that's the end of that story. Wiki editors may not decide if the person is "Jewish enough" for whatever standard they come up with. That's original research. If a reputable source said so, we may say it, regardless of whether or not a particular Wikipedia editor thinks the source is wrong. No such requirement as "self-identification", nor may you have one. The only requirement for "any" piece of information on Wikipedia is "source-identification", which is what reliable sources say about that particular topic, and, of course, also what that topic says on themselves. But not just one or the other. Please, don't debate me on the meaning of Jewishness, your opinions on self-identification, etc. Wikipedia is not a debate forum, which some people need to realize. When it comes to article content, it's 100%-source based. I suggest editors that have a problem with Wikipedia stating that Perelman is Jewish either A. contact the reliable sources that have said he is, since we are just the messenger or B. find a source that disputes Perelman being Jewish. There is no other course of action. It's all about the sources. I also suggest these editors go on to Terence Tao, Perelman's fellow Fields Medal winner, and inquire why it is so necessary that the article not only identify Tao as having (gasp!) parents who were immigrants from Hong Kong, but also puts him under the categories "Australian Americans", "Chinese Americans", "Chinese Australians" and last, but, not least, "Hong Kong-Australians". Enough is enough is enough with this crap. Mad Jack 03:05, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the hint regarding Tao. Regarding Perelmann, we all know that different sources have different ideas, when to call someone a Jew. --Pjacobi 17:52, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Well I think removing those Tao categories was a bit much. Certainly some apply. As for different sources have different ideas - doesn't matter. Wikipedia is supposed to represent what the majority of sources say. In this case, the majority (or actually, all the sources on this subject) say that he is Jewish, and none say anything else, so there is no problem at all. If, like in George Cantor, we had one source that said Jewish and another that said something else, we would have a problem. Mad Jack 19:00, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

I was going to comment, but Jack has made the case impeccably. If anyone has any source that Perelman is not Jewish, we can discuss further, but nobody has yet found one. Thus Perelman is Jewish. Anything else violates WP:NOR, which is non-negotiable.--Newport 12:06, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

I will rest my issue here, as it seems pointless to continue this as a prolonged edit war. If you at least keep in mind, that (alleged) ethnicity doesn't belong into section zero, I'll leave this alone for now.
My two general criticism:
  • Ethnicity and Religion tagging is unencyclopedic for persons not notable in this respect. Please compare a real encyclopedia.
  • Yes, Wikipedia relies on sourcing, but sometimes source criticism is needed. If I haven't missed a new one, two websites were cited as source, for tagging Perelman as Jew. But I pretty much assume that all (few) interviews with him are explicitely known and both these sites haven't had their own interview. So they are simply re-interpreting other sources. What our sources have reported as Jewish Family was re-interpreted as being a Jew, mirroring one of many differing definitions.
Pjacobi 13:29, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, that's a pretty logical interpretation (i.e. "Jewish family" equals "Jew", much like "Italian American family" = "Italian American"). Although I suppose Wikipedia editors aren't allowed to make that interpretation themselves, reliable sources certainly can (don't know if that's the case this time - but). As for section zero, yes, ethnicity or religion isn't supposed to go in header, so that's definite. As for noting ethnicity, etc. well, a large number of Wiki articles do, and a lot would look awkward if some of these were removed. As long as its got a good source and its not something like shoe size, I don't see why information can't be included in the article. But anyway, since this seems to have wrapped up, cheers... Mad Jack 16:29, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Failed GA Nomination

Due to the ongoing edit war, this article failed to satisfy GA criteria #5, that the article should be stable. When this matter has been resolved, this article can be renominated again in the Good Article candidate list. — Indon (reply) — 15:02, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What does it take to understand Perelman's proof?

I'm still a freshman math major, but I'd like to know what it takes to get hold of the ideas he presents. Could someone kindly elaborate on this?

[edit] Voting for modification of Yau's wiki-entry

Here I have suggested voting for modifying Yau's entry, or creating a new entry on Yau vs. Perelman affair. Yau, already has been involved in another scandal of plagiarism, and after his abuse of his editor position in a journal, it is not clear who is the scientist with great moral (see also Tian-Yau affair). Voting at: [2] Danko Georgiev MD 02:26, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] On the Yau crew - Zhu and Cao completely derogated Perelman's proof

Dear wiki-editors, I was informed some months ago about the proof of Poincare's conjecture by Perelman by prof. J. F. Glazebrook with whom I work on math modeling of some neurobiological processes. At that time the Fields medal was not awarded, and I have downloaded and read in brief some passages of Zhu and Cao original paper. BUT IN THE ORIGINAL PAPER [3] (see also [4]) BOTH OF THEM CLAIM FOR PRIORITY IN PROVING THE THEOREM, AND THEY ARGUE TO BE THE FIRST PEOPLE DOING THAT, AS WELL AS EXPLICITLY STATING AT SEVERAL PLACES THAT THE PERELMAN'S PROOF IS INCOMPLETE, AND EVEN PROBABLY UNPROVABLE [FALSE] BY HIS OUTLINES GIVEN IN THE EPRINTS. They state explicitly at many places that they have completed the proof by novel approach (method) invented by them!!! So I was greatly disgusted by this fact, and now I have read in the Wiki-entry that Yau organized all this sh..t. What is more Zhu and Cao seem to reject in press that they have claimed priority for the proof and have completely underestimated Perelman's work. After seeing this public statement I decided to contribute to revealing this extremely un-ethical behavior of Yau crew, and shortly I will post quotations from the Zhu and Cao paper. I hope that then some of wiki-editors will be able to insert them in the main article(s) [of Perelman, and/or Yau's crew]. Danko Georgiev MD 12:08, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Some preliminary citations, with specific claims in bold without commenting, the bolded passages speak of themselves:

Zhu and Cao's paper (published before awarding the Fields medal to Perelman):

ABSTRACT

  • "In this paper, we give a complete proof of the Poincare and the geometrization conjectures. This work depends on the accumulative works of many geometric analysts in the past thirty years. This proof should be considered as the crowning achievement of the Hamilton-Perelman theory of Ricci flow."

INTRODUCTION

  • "In this paper, we shall present the Hamilton-Perelman theory of Ricci ow. Based on it, we shall give the first written account of a complete proof of the Poincare conjecture and the geometrization conjecture of Thurston."

page 170

  • "When using the rescaling argument for surgically modified solutions of the Ricci flow, one encounters the difficulty of how to apply Hamilton's compactness theorem .. The idea to overcome this difficulty consists of two parts. The first part, due to Perelman .. The second part, due to the authors and Chen-Zhu, is to show that the surgically modified solutions are .. Perhaps, this second part is more crucial. Without it, Shi’s interior derivative estimate may not be applicable .. . We remark that in our proof of this second part ... we require a deep comprehension of the prolongation of the gluing "fine" caps for which we will use the recent uniqueness theorem of Bing-Long Chen and the second author for solutions of the Ricci ow on noncompact manifolds."

page 171

  • "As we pointed out before, we have 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."

Cao has stated (after awarding the Fields medal to Perelman):

  • "Hamilton and Perelman have done the most important fundamental works. They are the giants and our heroes. In my mind there is no question at all that Perelman deserves the Fields Medal. We just follow the footsteps of Hamilton and Perelman and explain the details. I hope everyone who read our paper would agree that we have given a rather fair account."

RHETORICAL QUESTION: Does "this second part (due to the authors and Chen-Zhu) is more crucial" means "explain the details"??? If Cao is not a hypocrat, then who has modified their paper? Danko Georgiev MD 01:38, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

REPLY TO CAO: "Well, I have read your paper, even couple of months before your interview and I think you have completely derogated Perelman's contributions, plus you have tried quite un-ethically to use the fact that Perelman's work is not published in peer-review journal and steal his priority. Is this Mr. Cao a "fair" account? " Danko Georgiev MD 01:53, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

REPLY TO DANKO: Maybe you are right, but Prof. Richard S. Hamilton stands up for Prof. Yau in a letter to the New Yorker http://boards.newyorker.com/message.jspa?messageID=1724 89.48.101.228 01:51, 25 December 2006 (UTC)Henri Eber

[edit] Fields vs Abel

The current version contains the phrases (1) <<The Fields Medal is widely considered to be the top honor a mathematician can receive. >> and, further down, (2) <<The Fields Medal is the highest award in mathematics; two to four medals are awarded every four years.>> In my view the Abel Prize ought to be mentioned along with the Fields. It has a shorter history (Serre got the first, in 2003), but is (again, in my view) destined to become an even more prestigious prize than the Fields. Such statements, along with "the Abel Prize is the Nobel Prize of mathematics", etc., are admittedly more vaguely worded than mathematical theorems, but nevertheless matter to the mathematics community. I therefore wished to edit in (1') <<The Fields Medal, alongside the Abel Prize, is widely considered to be the top honor a mathematician can receive.>> and (2') <<In addition to the Abel Prize, the Fields Medal is the highest award in mathematics; two to four medals are awarded every four years.>>, and did so yesterday, thinking that these small amendments would not be controversial in the slightest. But they are, apparently, since Chan-Ho Suh immediately took them out, citing "revert incorrect remarks".

This is a relatively small matter in the present encyclopaedic context, perhaps, and I have no wish to contribute to the editing war -- adjusting the initial and partly unfair views on Yau's conduct might be more important, for example. Nevertheless, we might attempt to converge to proper statements that meet intended wikipedia standards. Statements with "is widely considered" etc. risk being classified as using weasel words. So I wait for sufficiently convincing arguments for _not_ editing back (1') and (2') above. Slavatrudu 07:32, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I think the Abel Prize has far less prestige than the Fields Medal. More importantly, we have references corroborating the status of the Fields Medal (see Fields Medal), while you have offered no proof for your opinion on the importance of the Abel Prize. If the Abel Prize will ever become more prestigious than the Fields Medal, then we'll have to change the article, but I see no reason to change it now.
You might be interested in Talk:Wolf Prize for a comparison of that prize with the Abel Prize. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 08:05, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] three times Nobel Prize winning author Anton Yavorsky

huh? can somebody fix that, i just don't get it. --Rajah 21:40, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

It's vandalism - I shall revert it.--Runcorn 22:44, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Picture of Perelman

Why is that nobody didn't try to put just a single picture of this great mathematician. Is it due to copyright restrictions or what. Please try to put us some. Edyirdaw 11:26, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Basically it is due to copyright issues. It is not a matter of just getting permission to use some copyrighted image even. The image would need to be licensed appropriatedly to be compatible with the GFDL, which is what the content for all of Wikipedia is licensed under. So basically an appropriate license would be GFDL or a typical Creative Commons license. --Chan-Ho (Talk) 16:24, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
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