An engrossing examination of an enigmatic genius.
The story of Russian mathematical prodigy Grigory Perelman, who solved a problem that had stumped everyone for a century—then walked away from his chosen field.
Gessen (Blood Matters: From Inherited Illness to Designer Babies, How the World and I Found Ourselves in the Future of the Gene, 2008, etc.) tells Perelman’s story from the viewpoint of a former student in the educational system of which he was a product. Soviet mathematicians worked in isolation from their Western counterparts during the Stalinist era, but were encouraged because of their value to the state. Perelman, an unusually gifted student, was identified early and his talent nurtured, even though, as a Jew, he faced crippling handicaps under the Soviets. He won the attention of an innovative math coach, Sergei Rukshin. The coach and student bonded early, and Perelman was accepted at a prestigious university and then at a top graduate school. As a star, he was allowed an unusual degree of eccentricity, which in his case included an almost total disregard of other people. Numerous contemporaries attest to his fanatical adherence to a set of ideals that essentially ignored the realities of the Soviet state. Politics, prejudice, making friends and getting ahead in the world—these meant nothing to Perelman. During postdoctoral work in the United States, he refused to cut his hair and nails and turned down job offers because he felt it beneath his dignity to apply for them. Meanwhile, he was homing in on a solution to the Poincaré Conjecture, a topological riddle so puzzling that the Clay Institute in Boston offered a $1 million prize to anyone who could solve it. When, in 2002, Perelman posted a solution on the Internet, he seemed to expect instant recognition. Instead, the world’s mathematicians meticulously checked his proof, which Perelman took it as an insult and turned down a Fields medal, the math equivalent of a Nobel. To this day, there is significant doubt about whether he will accept the Clay prize. Though Gessen was unable to interview her subject, she paints a fascinating picture of the Soviet math establishment and of the mind of one of its most singular products.
An engrossing examination of an enigmatic genius.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-15-101406-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2009
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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