Der Beweis des Jahrhunderts

In 2000, a list of seven mathematical puzzles was published, each with a prize of one million US dollars. One of these famous "millennium problems" was the proof of the Poincaré conjecture, on which the brightest minds had already cut their teeth. In 2002, the proof was given - by Grigori Yakovlevich "Grisha" Perelman, an eccentric Russian-Jewish mathematician. But Perelman refused - not only the money, but increasingly the world. Today he lives without a permanent job and in complete seclusion with his mother in St. Petersburg. Why was he of all people able to solve the problem - and what happened to him afterwards? Masha Gessen follows in Perelman's footsteps, from his beginnings as a child prodigy to his retreat. Little by little, a picture emerges of a man whose almost superhuman intellectual rigor enabled him to achieve mathematical feats, but also increasingly alienated him from the world.