Poincare's Prize by George G. Szpiro

One of life's little joys is finding an interesting book in an unlikely place.  Such was the joy I had in finding this book at a Dollar Store.  I always look through the sections where "remainders" are offered for the usual $1.  These are books that haven't sold in the regular book stores.

I find that books written by unsucessful politicians find their way to the Dollar Store because nobody wants to waste time reading  them... and usually, neither do I.   Sometimes books show up because they look too difficult to read.  Such, I'm sure was the case with this book by mathematician and journalist, George Szpiro. 

Poincare's Prize  or The Hundred-Year Quest to Solve One of Math's Greatest Puzzles

Monsieur Henri Poincare (accent on the last e  .. the Brits pronounce his name: Pon ca ray) died in the Titanic year of 1912, at Paris, where he was Professor of Mathematical Astronomy at the University, Member of the French Academy and the Academe des Sciences.  He was 58 years old and one of the great minds of the 19th and 20th centuries.

In 1904, he had made the following unproven conjecture: (according to a "simplified" entry I found in Wikipedia)

Every simply connected, closed 3-manifold is homeomorphic to the 3-sphere... or:

If a 3-manifold is homotopy equivalent to the 3-sphere, then it is necessarily homeomorphic to it.

For almost one hundred years, mathematicians tried to find some way to prove this conjecture and earn a prize of one million dollars.  Finally, in 2003, a semi-recluse Russian named Grigori Perelman came up with that elusive proof.  He was offered the $1,000,000 prize.....he turned it down.  He felt that he didn't deserve it because other mathematicians had laid the groundwork that allowed him to come up with the proof.

For somewhat clearer information about Doctor Poincare and his conjecture, visit:

http://www.claymath.org/poincare/

Now, I am not a mathematician.  I did manage to pass basic Algebra, which I took in High School, for fun, along with my cousin, Charlie  And, at one time,  I was told by my grandfather that I had been  an Idiot Savant as a young child.. able to answer addition and subtraction problems instantaneously in my head.   (However, knowing my grandfather, he may have been "pulling my leg, although I do vaguely remember people giving me numbers to add or subtract when I was a very yooung kid." )

I vigorously avoided all mathematics classes in college.  

My grandfather did introduce me to the wonder of Moebius strips and showed me how I could have fun with them.

That has been my only exposure to "higher" mathematics.  So, why the Devil did I go to the trouble of reading this complicated book?

The answer is simply that in my dotage, I still want  to learn all that I can before I kick off this topological sphere.. and besides that, the book reads like a mystery story.

Mr. Szpiro takes the reader into the lives of all of the mathematicians who have been trying to solve this problem for one hundred years, and, I have to admit, these are mostly weird people, even by my very liberal standards... That, of course, makes them very interesting to read about.  I  enjoyed this book.

One question bothers me though.  Why isn't Monsieur Poincare or his conjecture mentioned in Bill Bryson's book A Short History of Nearly Everything, considering that lots of information uncovered by mathematicians during their quest to solve the problem has been used in important endeavors, such as the U.S. Space Program. 

I'm going to drop this book off at an "unofficial library" spot and see if anybody picks it up to read.

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