Genius Mathematician Turns Down $1 Million Prize

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Blackboard with math equations --- Image by © Tom Grill/Tetra Images/Corbis

If you were a struggling mathematician and you won $1 million and international recognition for your work you’d probably be jumping for joy, right? Well, not if you’re Grigory Perelman.

The Russian mathematician solved a 100-year-old math problem, winning him $1 million from the U.S. Clay Mathematics Institute. Dr. Perelman is 44 and has been living in a “cockroach-infested flat in St. Petersburg,” reports the Daily Mail.

But he won’t be taking the possibly life-changing prize because he doesn’t feel that his contributions to math are any more significant than the other mathematicians who’ve worked on the problem before him.

A genius and a saint?

Though he’s believed to be the smartest man in the world, Newsfeed thinks that if he was so smart, he’d have taken the money.