I HAD NEVER BEEN ON A STAKEOUT, but I knew how it was done. I took a book. I brought a few sandwiches. I flipped on the radio and listened to the traffic report in Russian. That kept me awake as I waited for the mathematician.

Brett Forest in Playboy July-August 2012 issue.

Perelman in August 2006 was awarded the Fields Medal for “his contributions to geometry and his revolutionary insights into the analytical and geometric structure of the Ricci flow.” He turned down the medal and prize.

Then on 18 March 2010, it was announced that he had met the criteria to receive the first Clay Millennium Prize for resolution of the Poincaré conjecture. Again he turned this down.

Perelman clearly shuns publicity…

Grigori Perelman is one of the greatest mathematicians of our time, a Russian genius who solved the Poincaré Conjecture, which plagued the brightest minds for a century. At the height of his fame, he refused a million-dollar award for his work. Then he disappeared. Our writer hunts him down on the streets of St. Petersburg.

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Shattered Genius by Brett Forest