The mathematician who turned down a million dollars

A closer look

While most of us would sell a kidney for a fraction of a million dollars, Russian mathematician Grigori Perelman casually declined a literal fortune. In 2003, he solved the Poincaré Conjecture, a mind-bending topological problem that had stumped academics for a century. When offered the prestigious Fields Medal and a million-dollar prize from the Clay Mathematics Institute, he essentially told the academic world to touch grass, refusing the money and returning to live quietly with his mother.