The Quest to Solve the Hardest Math Problem

A recent article (which appears not to be available online) in Mental Floss talked some about the quest to prove the Poincaré conjecture. It's the sort of thing that, at some level, seems to be true intuitively but is a nightmare to prove. One of the people who attempted to do so eventually quit math and took up poetry, another swore he would not marry until he proved it - and died a bachelor.

Between 2002 and 2003, a reclusive mathematician named Perelman posted online an outline of a proof, which was then filled out and verified by others. He refused the Fields Medal which the ICM offered him for this feat. Given that the conjecture was proposed in 1904, and this only after Poincaré himself found a flaw in his own proof, the problem went unsolved for over a hundred years.

As for Mental Floss, it is awesome. And they have a couple of articles in the "More" section that are math related: 5 Rap Songs That don't Make the Grade and a proof that Vampires are Mathematically Impossible. Which is flawed because the quoted author assumes that vampires turn everyone they feed on instead of killing most of them. To use Anne Rice's terminology, not everyone deserves the Dark Gift.