The rejection of the Fields Medal by mathematician Grigory Perelman for his work on the Poincare conjecture has been a source of fascination for me since it made the news last week. Reading a commentary in today’s NY Times about Perelman, I got to thinking. What compels someone to put his ideas above himself and his ego? How many other mathematicians, scientists, engineers or MDs would produce great work, but then put the results of that work freely on the Web, not attempt to publish it, refuse a coveted international prize for it, avoid media attention and say that it’s not about taking personal credit? The work should stand on its own regardless of who produced it.

In a society that loves to worship heroes, one has to admire someone who is able to completely set his ego aside from his work and ideas. Perelman is one lone individual who refuses to play the game of politics, competition and hero-worship. While one can look down on this game as Perelman seems to (and it would be nice to imagine a world where everyone was altruistic and didn’t care about credit), science would grind to a halt if there was no ego or fame involved in discovery. Scientists are human beings and most humans need rewards of one kind or another to keep us going.