Turning down a cool million dollars

It’s not everyday that someone wins a prize of one million dollars. A cool million can buy a lot of things. That amount is enough to fund a small startup in the Philippines. It’s even enough money to buy a decent house, everything in it, a car and retire comfortably from the interest of what would be left. But I guess, conviction/beliefs are more important than fame and fortune.

From an article in the New Scientist, it looks like Russian mathematician Grigori Perelman has turned down both fame and fortune for solving one of the most difficult problems in mathematics (relating to the properties of three-dimensional spheres).

Perelman turned down the mathematic’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize called the Fields Medal and the Clay Mathematics Institute offer $1 million prize for the resolution.

It seems the reason is that Perelman finds it unfair to accept them because not all the work leading to the resolution of the mathematical problem can be attributed to him.

Maybe the Clay Institute can just setup a Perelman fund that will help mathematically gifted students to get free education in developing countries. What do you think?