What: The Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Portland State University presents this year's Fariborz Maseeh Lecture in Mathematical Sciences, "Poincaré, Perelman and Prizes," with Sir John Ball. The event is sponsored by the Massiah Foundation.

In this lecture, Ball describes the colorful and controversial events surrounding the Russian mathematician Grigori Perelman's 2006 refusal to accept the Fields Medal awarded to him by the International Mathematical Union and the International Congress of Mathematicians in Madrid. Perelman had been awarded the medal, regarded as the equivalent of a Nobel Prize, because of his groundbreaking work on the Poincaré conjecture, one of the most famous open problems of mathematics. Ball chaired the Fields Medal committee that awarded Perelman the medal, and this unfolding story of mathematics and personalities has attracted unprecedented worldwide media attention and was the subject of a New Yorker article.  

When: 7-9 p.m., Thursday, May 15, 2008.

Where: Multnomah Falls Room, University Place (310 SW Lincoln St., Portland, OR.).

Cost: The lecture is free and open to the public.

Contact:For more information contact Marek Elzanowski at 503-725-3647 or elzanom@pdx.edu, or visit www.mth.pdx.edu/events/maseeh_lecture.asp.

Background: Sir John Ball is Sedleian Professor of Natural Philosophy at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, and Fellow of the Queen's College. He has held Visiting Professorships at the University of California at Berkeley; the Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris; the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bangalore; the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton; and at the University of Montpellier II.