‘Nyet’ to $1 million? Math genius may reject award

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — Who doesn’t want to be a millionaire? Maybe a 43-year-old unemployed bachelor who lives with his elderly mother in Russia – and who won $1 million for solving a problem that has stumped mathematicians for a century. Grigory Perelman can’t decide if he wants the money. “He said he would need to think about it,” said James Carlson, who telephoned Perelman with the news he had won the Millennium Prize awarded by the Clay Mathematics Institute of Cambridge, Mass.