There's a funny story I read that when you won the Fields Medal, somebody from the internet wrote you and asked, you know, what are you going to do now that you've won this prestigious award? And then you just quickly, very humbly said that, you know, this shiny medal is not going to solve any of the problems I'm currently working on.

So I'm just going to keep working on them. First of all, it's funny to me that you would answer an email in that context. It just shows your humility. But anyway, it's another way for me to ask about Gregorio Perlman. What do you think about him famously declining the Fields Medal and the Millennial Prize, which came with a $1 million of prize money?

He stated that I'm not interested in money or fame. The prize is completely irrelevant for me. If the proof is correct, then no other recognition is needed. He's somewhat of an outlier, even among mathematicians who tend to have somewhat idealistic views. I've never met him. I'd be interested to meet him one day, but I'd never had the chance.

He's always had strong views about certain things. It's not like he was completely isolated from the math community. I mean, he would give talks and write papers and so forth. But at some point, he just decided not to engage with the rest of the community. He was disillusioned. And he decided to peace out and, you know, collect mushrooms in St.

Petersburg or something. And that's fine. You can do that. He hasn't published since in this field, but that's fine. There's many, many other people who've done so as well. I guess one thing I didn't realize initially with the Fields Medal is that it sort of makes you part of the establishment.

Most mathematicians, you know, there's career mathematicians, you know, you just focus on publishing your next paper, maybe getting one test to promote one rank and starting a few projects, maybe taking some students or something. Yeah. But then suddenly people want your opinion on things and you have to think a little bit about, you know, things that you might just so foolishly say because you know, no one's going to listen to you.

So it's more important now. This is where I would probably say that I like the Fields Medal. It does inspire a lot of young people somehow. This is just how human brains work. Yeah. At the same time, I also want to give sort of respect to somebody like Gregorio Perlman, who is critical of awards in his mind.

Those are his principles and any human that's able for their principles to like do the thing that most humans would not be able to do. It's beautiful to see. Thank you for watching this clip. Please subscribe to the Lex Friedman YouTube channel and consider watching the full episode of the podcast.