Leaving the World While Alive: An Interpretive Essay and Documentary Archive on Grigori Perelman's Withdrawal (2005–2026)

Abstract

This paper approaches the Russian mathematician Grigori Yakovlevich Perelman, who published a proof of the Poincaré conjecture in 2002–2003 and subsequently withdrew from public life after declining the Fields Medal (2006), the Clay Millennium Prize (2010) and candidacy for full membership of the Russian Academy of Sciences (2011), not through his mathematical contributions but through the way of life he chose after leaving mathematics. The paper has two components. The first is an interpretive essay written from the author’s own standpoint. It compares Perelman’s withdrawal with ترك الدنيا (terkü’d-dünyâ) / פְּרִישׁוּת מִן הָעוֹלָם (perişut min ha-olam) (“leaving the world”), the renunciation practised in the traditions of hermits, priests and monks, and asks: if ascetic traditions draw their strength and meaning from God, what sustains a withdrawal for which the public record shows no religious or metaphysical grounding? The second is a documentary archive that brings together, through explicit source criticism, news reports, photographs and video recordings about Perelman published between 2010 and 2026. The paper also openly addresses the ethical tension inherent in archiving a person who has refused to be put on display, and sets out the principles followed in compiling the archive. It concludes that Perelman’s choice can be partly illuminated by religious asceticism, secular askesis and the ethos of science, yet cannot be fully reduced to any of them, and that the central question remains open. This PDF edition omits the photographs and video recordings of the archive; they can be viewed in the online version at zackha.com/research/archive-on-grigori-perelman.