Atrocity Archives playing out in real life? :-)

Aug 15, 2006 22:56

(This has been cross-posted to charlesstross

I have just finished reading Charles Stross' Atrocity Archives. In this novel, solutions to certain fundamental mathematical problems -- such as, for example, P vs NP problem -- can be used to summon demons and unspeakable horrors from parallel universes. A secret agency called Laundry does its best to hide this knowledge from the public. Whenever someone discovers a solution to a famous mathematical problem that has confounded many of the brightest minds for many years, Laundry makes sure that person disappears and the public never finds out that a solution has been discovered.

In an interesting coincidence, I read this article in today's New York Times: Elusive Proof, Elusive Prover: A New Mathematical Mystery

"Grisha Perelman, where are you?

Three years ago, a Russian mathematician by the name of Grigory Perelman, a k a Grisha, in St. Petersburg, announced that he had solved a famous and intractable mathematical problem, known as the Poincaré conjecture, about the nature of space.

After posting a few short papers on the Internet and making a whirlwind lecture tour of the United States, Dr. Perelman disappeared back into the Russian woods in the spring of 2003, leaving the world's mathematicians to pick up the pieces and decide if he was right."

Apparently, no one knows where he is. To quote the article,

"Until his papers on Poincaré started appearing, some friends thought Dr. Perelman had left mathematics. Although they were so technical and abbreviated that few mathematicians could read them, they quickly attracted interest among experts. In the spring of 2003, Dr. Perelman came back to the United States to give a series of lectures at Stony Brook and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and also spoke at Columbia, New York University and Princeton.

But once he was back in St. Petersburg, he did not respond to further invitations. The e-mail gradually ceased.

[...]

Recently, Dr. Perelman is said to have resigned from Steklov. E-mail messages addressed to him and to the Steklov Institute went unanswered. "

I wonder if Charles Stross was actually on to something... :-)

science fiction, charles stross, mathematics, books

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