Fields awardee Shing-Tung Yau lied in Chinese media about Poincare conjecture proof's attribution

[yaoz...@gmail.com]

On June 4, every Chinese media reported that "two Chinese
mathematicians finally solved Poincare's conjecture." (
http://english.people.com.cn/200606/04/eng20060604_270860.html )

Shing-Tung Yau and another Chinese mathematician Yang Le are the
principal endorsors of the two mathematicians Zhu and Cao's claim. In
Chinese versions of the news, Yang Le even boasted that "The American
Hamilton contributed over 50%, the Russian Perelman about 25%, and the
Chinese Yau, Zhu and Cao et al about 30%." (
http://www.popyard.com/cgi-mod/npost.cgi?num=90542&r=0 )

Yau also pointed out that "Cao and Zhu's work has much more value than
proving Goldbach's conjecture." (
http://www.popyard.com/cgi-mod/npost.cgi?num=90584&r=0 ) I think his
mention to Goldbach's conjecture is because a Chinese mathematician
Chen Jinrun made real contribution to it in the 60's and was since well
known by every ordinary Chinese.

I think the Chinese audiences' minds are heavily hijacked by Yau's
irresponsible words. Can some independent Western mathematicians stand
out and talk back?

Regards,
Yao Ziyuan

[yaoz...@gmail.com]

yaoziy...@gmail.com wrote:
> On June 4, every Chinese media reported that "two Chinese
> mathematicians finally solved Poincare's conjecture." (
> http://english.people.com.cn/200606/04/eng20060604_270860.html )
>
> Shing-Tung Yau and another Chinese mathematician Yang Le are the
> principal endorsors of the two mathematicians Zhu and Cao's claim. In
> Chinese versions of the news, Yang Le even boasted that "The American
> Hamilton contributed over 50%, the Russian Perelman about 25%, and the
> Chinese Yau, Zhu and Cao et al about 30%." (
> http://www.popyard.com/cgi-mod/npost.cgi?num=90542&r=0 )
>
> Yau also pointed out that "Cao and Zhu's work has much more value than
> proving Goldbach's conjecture." (
> http://www.popyard.com/cgi-mod/npost.cgi?num=90584&r=0 ) I think his
> mention to Goldbach's conjecture is because a Chinese mathematician
> Chen Jinrun made real contribution to it in the 60's and was since well

Chen Jingrun to be exact.

[Tsukamoto Tenma]

At least Yau seemed more trustworthy amongst Chinese mathematicans. I still
consider the claim of proof highly doubtful, as this is not mentioned in any
Western media.
<yaoz...@gmail.com>
???????:1149490925.5...@y43g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...

[Robert Israel]

In article <1149490925.5...@y43g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>,

<yaoz...@gmail.com> wrote:
>On June 4, every Chinese media reported that "two Chinese
>mathematicians finally solved Poincare's conjecture." (
>http://english.people.com.cn/200606/04/eng20060604_270860.html )

>Shing-Tung Yau and another Chinese mathematician Yang Le are the
>principal endorsors of the two mathematicians Zhu and Cao's claim. In
>Chinese versions of the news, Yang Le even boasted that "The American
>Hamilton contributed over 50%, the Russian Perelman about 25%, and the
>Chinese Yau, Zhu and Cao et al about 30%." (
>http://www.popyard.com/cgi-mod/npost.cgi?num=90542&r=0 )

First accounts of mathematics-related events in Western news media are
often inaccurate. I don't know if the Chinese media are better at this.
But it seems there is such a paper in Vol. 10 #2 of the Asian Journal of
Mathematics, and its abstract can be found at
<http://www.intlpress.com/AJM/p/2006/10_2/AJM-10-2-165-498-Abstract.php>
Yes, it does claim to provide a complete proof of the Poincaré and the
geometrization conjectures. I didn't find a preprint in arXiv.org, or
on Cao's website.

>Yau also pointed out that "Cao and Zhu's work has much more value than
>proving Goldbach's conjecture." (
>http://www.popyard.com/cgi-mod/npost.cgi?num=90584&r=0 ) I think his
>mention to Goldbach's conjecture is because a Chinese mathematician
>Chen Jinrun made real contribution to it in the 60's and was since well
>known by every ordinary Chinese.

>I think the Chinese audiences' minds are heavily hijacked by Yau's
>irresponsible words. Can some independent Western mathematicians stand
>out and talk back?

If Cao and Zhu's claim is correct, and I have no particular reason to
doubt it, I would not be at all surprised if this paper was very
valuable indeed. And Yau would be in a good position to comment
on this. But in some sense Yau's statement is rather strange:
these are completely different areas of mathematics, and since we don't
have a proof of Goldbach's conjecture how can he speculate on how
valuable such a proof might be? It might turn out to involve techniques
that could be applied to all sorts of other problems. It might be
fair to say, though, that Chen's work, though a great achievement, has
not led to such applications.

Robert Israel isr...@math.ubc.ca
Department of Mathematics http://www.math.ubc.ca/~israel
University of British Columbia Vancouver, BC, Canada

[Pubkeybreaker]

Robert Israel wrote:
> In article <1149490925.5...@y43g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>,
> <yaoz...@gmail.com> wrote:

> First accounts of mathematics-related events in Western news media are
> often inaccurate. I don't know if the Chinese media are better at this.
> But it seems there is such a paper in Vol. 10 #2 of the Asian Journal of
> Mathematics, and its abstract can be found at
> <http://www.intlpress.com/AJM/p/2006/10_2/AJM-10-2-165-498-Abstract.php>
> Yes, it does claim to provide a complete proof of the Poincaré and the
> geometrization conjectures. I didn't find a preprint in arXiv.org, or
> on Cao's website.

>

> If Cao and Zhu's claim is correct, and I have no particular reason to
> doubt it, I would not be at all surprised if this paper was very
> valuable indeed.

The abstract is strange. Part of it said:

"This proof should be considered as the crowning achievement of the
Hamilton-Perelman theory of Ricci flow."

Competent mathematicians do not pat themselves on the back in their own
paper. They let OTHERS judge the work. This one sentence alone in the
abstract
makes me wonder if the authors are playing with a full deck. Authors
do NOT
refer to their own work as a "crowning achievment".

Also, AFAIK, the Perelman result had been more or less accepted as
complete. I had not heard of any gaps. Yet these authors seem to
minimize
Perelman's contribution.

Nor do they give a general indication of the gap (if any) in
Perelman's work.

It seems like a lot of hype.

> And Yau would be in a good position to comment
> on this. But in some sense Yau's statement is rather strange:

So is the hype.

[fedka]

> Robert Israel wrote:
<snip>

> The abstract is strange. Part of it said:
>
> "This proof should be considered as the crowning
> achievement of the
> Hamilton-Perelman theory of Ricci flow."
>
>
> Competent mathematicians do not pat themselves on the
> back in their own
> paper. They let OTHERS judge the work. This one
> sentence alone in the
> abstract
> makes me wonder if the authors are playing with a
> full deck. Authors
> do NOT
> refer to their own work as a "crowning achievment".

In case you didn't notice, these authors are not native speakers of English--perhaps if they had been they would have used a more appropriate term like "culmination" rather than "crowning achievement." As they mention elsewhere in the abstract, "This work depends on the accumulative works of many geometric analysts in the past thirty years"--they certainly intend what they're doing to be a significant contribution, but they in no sense minimize the roles that other people have played.

I don't really know anything about Zhu, but the charge that Cao is not a "competent mathematician" is rather strange--consider visiting his webpage http://www.lehigh.edu/~huc2/ if you need to be disabused of this notion.

> Also, AFAIK, the Perelman result had been more or
> less accepted as
> complete. I had not heard of any gaps.

Then you haven't been listening very carefully. Perelman's papers were extremely innovative and introduced a compelling framework for how to prove the result, but in no sense did they provide a complete proof. A number of quite prominent mathematicians (e.g., Kleiner-Lott, Morgan-Tian, in addition to Cao-Zhu) have expended a lot of effort in filling in the details, and now we're finally starting to see the manuscripts resulting from these (Kleiner-Lott put their notes on the arxiv last month, and I believe Morgan-Tian have submitted their book manuscript to the publisher by now, though I'm not sure if it's been refereed yet).

I'm not sure whether the hype in the article is more due to the reporter or to Yau, but one reason that Yau would want to hype Cao-Zhu's paper is because he wants the work that was done in his seminar to get more attention than similar work done by others in the same vein.

The fact that the western media haven't said anything about this doesn't seem to me at all significant--word of Perelman's original papers didn't filter down to the media until several months after their initial appearance, so I wouldn't expect them to be any quicker on the uptake now. The Chinese media seem to be somewhat more interested in covering mathematics (at least when it's done by Chinese people) than the US media.

[jhnr...@yahoo.co.uk]

Pubkeybreaker wrote:
>
> Robert Israel wrote:
> > In article <1149490925.5...@y43g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>,
> > <yaoz...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > First accounts of mathematics-related events in Western news media are
> > often inaccurate. I don't know if the Chinese media are better at this.
> > But it seems there is such a paper in Vol. 10 #2 of the Asian Journal of
> > Mathematics, and its abstract can be found at
> > <http://www.intlpress.com/AJM/p/2006/10_2/AJM-10-2-165-498-Abstract.php>
> > Yes, it does claim to provide a complete proof of the Poincaré and the
> > geometrization conjectures. I didn't find a preprint in arXiv.org, or
> > on Cao's website.
>
> >
> > If Cao and Zhu's claim is correct, and I have no particular reason to
> > doubt it, I would not be at all surprised if this paper was very
> > valuable indeed.
>
> The abstract is strange. Part of it said:
>
> "This proof should be considered as the crowning achievement of the
> Hamilton-Perelman theory of Ricci flow."
>
> Competent mathematicians do not pat themselves on the back in their own
> paper. They let OTHERS judge the work. This one sentence alone in the
> abstract makes me wonder if the authors are playing with a full deck.
> Authors do NOT refer to their own work as a "crowning achievment".

But in Chinese, from which the abstract was presumably translated,
the corresponding phrase might not have the same lofty connotations.

Or maybe some misguided translator (working for a Chinese ministry
of information or propaganda?) deliberately exaggerated the self-
congratulatory tone on their behalf.

> Also, AFAIK, the Perelman result had been more or less accepted as
> complete. I had not heard of any gaps. Yet these authors seem to
> minimize Perelman's contribution.

I was wondering about that too - I'm sure I read somewhere only
a few months ago that Perelman had the whole thing well and truly
in the bag, with some devious and novel use of "surgery".

Cheers

John R Ramsden

[qm]

> > The abstract is strange. Part of it said:
> >
> > "This proof should be considered as the crowning achievement of the
> > Hamilton-Perelman theory of Ricci flow."

It says that the proof is "the achievement of THE H-P THEORY". It does
not say that the proof is the achievement of Cao-Zhu.