Grigori Perelman is among the four 2006 Fields Medallists. The announcement was made in Madrid today, 22 August, during the opening ceremony of the International Congress of Mathematicians. Perelman’s proof, which verifies Poincare’s Conjecture, solves one of mathematics’ most perplexing problems, first presented by the great French mathematician and physicist in 1904. Last June, participants in ICTP’s Summer School and Conference on Geometry and Topology of 3-Manifolds became one of the first group’s to reaffirm Perelman’s proof. See Shapes, Spaces and Spheres, News from ICTP, Summer 2005, for a detailed description of their efforts.
Other 2006 Fields Medallists are Andrei Okounkov, University of California at Berkeley; Terence Tao, University of California at Los Angeles; and Wendelin Werner, UniversitÃ© de Paris Sud, Orsay, France. Werner spoke at ICTP’s School and Conference on Probability Theory in 2002.