Reclusive prizewinner has cracked Poincare code: expert

0 Comments | AFP, August, 2006

MADRID (AFP) — Russian recluse Grigory Perelman, awarded the mathematics world's version of a Nobel prize, the Fields Medal, has indeed solved the "Poincare conjecture" regarding properties of multi-dimensional space, experts said.

The riddle had perplexed mathematicians since it was coined by Frenchman Henri Poincare in 1904 but Perelman has worked it all out, experts led by US theorist Richard Hamilton told the 25th annual International Congress of Mathematicians.

In a lecture on Tuesday, Hamilton said Perelman's work on Ricci flow -- a complex degree of measurement in differential geometry -- in order to solve the conjecture was valid although, Hamilton said with some understatement, "difficult to understand."

Perelman published his findings on the...