Russian solves century-old math problem, refuses award

Colleagues say he also seems uninterested in a 1 million prize he might be due over his feat of wizardry: proving a theorem about the nature of multidimensional space that has stumped very smart people for 100 years.

The award, called a Fields Medal, was announced at the International Congress of Mathematicians, an event held every four years, this time in Madrid. Three other mathematicians8212;another Russian, a Frenchman and an Australian8212;also won Fields honours this year.

8220;I regret that Dr Perelman has declined to accept the medal,8221; said John Ball, president of the International Mathematical Union.

The riddle Perelman tackled is called the Poincare conjecture, which essentially says that in three dimensions you cannot transform a doughnut shape into a sphere without ripping.