The $1 Million Millennium Problem #5
The Poincaré Conjecture
~ A problem that is over 100 years old ~
The Poincaré Conjecture may soon become a theorem if the mathematics community can agree that a solution exists. However, credit for the work is not easily defined.
On June 3, 2006 Professor Shing-Tung Yau, chairman of his mathematics institute in Beijing, held a press conference from which the following is a quote:
"Hamilton contributed over fifty per cent; the Russian, Perelman, about twenty-five percent; and the Chinese, Yau, Zhu, and Cao, et al., about thirty percent."
Even the best can make mistakes.
See Nasar and Gruber's "Annals of Mathematics: Manifold Destiny" The New Yorker, August 28, 2006, p. 56.