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 Poincare 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, 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.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...NG71KJJPK1.DTL
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"You don't see what you're seeing until you see it," Thurston said, "but when you do see it, it lets you see many other things."
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That's the most succinct explanation of learning I've seen in a long time. Beautiful.