The Beard Coach

Alright all you mathematicians out there.  You’ve been thinking, “The Beard Coach has poetry and art, but where’s the math?”

Here’s the answer.

A Mathematical Beard Theory

And here is a photo of bearded mathematician Grigori Perelman.

In 2006 Perelman successfully proved the Poincaré Conjecture winning him the Fields Medal, the top honor a mathematician can receive.  Then in a move fittingly awesome for his beardedness he declined it.  Here is how he summed up his reasoning.

“[Sir John Ball, president of the International Mathematical Union] proposed to me three alternatives: accept and come; accept and don’t come, and we will send you the medal later; third, I don’t accept the prize. From the very beginning, I told him I have chosen the third one… [the prize] was completely irrelevant for me. Everybody understood that if the proof is correct then no other recognition is needed.”