## Thursday, December 28, 2006 ... //

### NPR on the breakthrough of the year: Poincaré's conjecture

The journal Science has picked the breakthrough of the year. The number one is Grigori Perelman's proof of Poincaré's conjecture.

has something to say about it. They interview Shing-Tung Yau who describes some stories he had with Richard Hamilton. Yau corrects some of the myths spread by the journalists and a poem by Yau is mentioned. (Yau has also written a poem for the Becker-Becker-Schwarz textbook.)

The program looks nice to me. The only error I noticed was the comment by the host that the Poincaré's conjecture talks about four-dimensional manifolds. Well, it talks about three-dimensional ones but the journalist has probably embedded the three-sphere into four dimensions. ;-)

They discuss the differences between the styles. Yau is mentioned as the builder of the empires. However, since the 1960s, every scientist in a certain context is expected to be another nice hippie. ;-)

Via David Goss.