Grisha perelman biography of rory

MOSCOW — In his office overlooking the faded pastel mansions along a St. Petersburg canal, a young Russian mathematician spent eight solitary years grappling with the Poincaré Conjecture, one of the most famous and frustrating conundrums in math.

Now, colleagues say, Grigori Perelman may not only have solved the century-old riddle. He may have helped advance many areas of math and physics, and made it possible to better understand the shape of the universe. "It seems like a very beautiful idea," one American colleague said.

If "Grisha" Perelman's proof of the Poincaré is correct — and many mathematicians suspect it is — it will seal his transformation from an obscure researcher into one of the world's leading scientists.

And he will become the first person eligible to claim a $1 million prize offered by the Clay Mathematics Institute of Cambridge, Mass., for solving what it calls one of the seven ce