The true story of a mathematical mystery, a million-dollarprize, and the fate of genius in today's world. In 2006, an eccentric Russian genius named Grigori Perelman solvedPoincare's Conjecture, one of seven great unsolved mathamaticalmysteries, the solution to any of which the Clay Institute, foundedby Boston businessman Landon Clay in 2000 to promote mathematics,promised a million-dollar prize. It is widely expected that thefirst Clay Prize will be awarded to Perelman in October 2009, andit is equally widely expected that he will decline it. Why? Masha Gessen set out to find out. In the manner of Nabokov's Real Life of Sebastian Knight , or more recently andaccessibly, Sylvia Nasar's A Beautiful Mind , or evenElizabeth Gilbert's The Last American Man , Gessen exploresthe nature of Perelma's mind and the reasons for his unusual,increasingly isolated behavior. Drawing on interviews with Perelman's teachers, classmates,coaches, teammates, and colleagues in Russia and the US, Gessen hasconstructed a gripp
