Russia's Mathematical Brilliance Explained

Masha Gessen, who visits tomorrow to talk about her Putin biography, is also the author of Perfect Rigor: A Genius and the Mathematical Breakthrough of the Century, a 2009 book about Grigori Perelman, the eccentric Russian mathematician who solved the Poincare conjecture.

Part of the book was excerpted in the Wall St. Journal:

"It may be no accident that, while some of the best American mathematical minds worked to solve one of the century's hardest problems—the Poincaré Conjecture—it was a Russian mathematician working in Russia who, early in this decade, finally triumphed."

"Decades before, in the Soviet Union, math placed a premium on logic and consistency in a culture that thrived on rhetoric and fear; it required highly specialized knowledge to understand; and, worst of all, mathematics lay claim to singular and knowable truths—when the regime had staked its own legitimacy on its own singular truth. All this made mathematicians suspect. Still, math escaped the purges, show trials and rule by decree that decimated other Soviet sciences."

More.