f you were to ask, "Who is the greatest mathematician who ever lived?", you would encounter long lists. You would see Pythagoras on those lists, come across Hypatia, and the name Gauss would slowly emerge from somewhere in your memory. But you would notice that mathematicians are not as famous as physicists. In physics, there is the Nobel; in mathematics, there is none. That's why the Fields Medal, considered the Nobel of mathematics, was created. But I ask you: How many people have heard the name of this medal, or wondered to whom it was awarded?

Mathematics is, in a way, the most difficult language in the universe. A physicist conducts experiments in massive laboratories, an astrophysicist examines space with telescopes kilometers in size, a particle physicist collects data in billion-dollar tunnels beneath the ground… A mathematician, however, wanders through the deepest labyrinths of the mind with just a paper and a pen. And often, we cannot even understand the problem itself, let alone its solution.

The number of people who speak this language is small; truly small. That's why we hardly recognize the names on the "greatest mathematicians of all time" lists. Yet, each of their stories is like a movie. And of the names on that list, only two are alive today. One of these two is considered, by objective assessments, the most genius living mathematician. The other, in my opinion, is a far more interesting character. This second person is also the name I want to talk about in this article: Grigori Perelman, also known as "The Mysterious Grigori."

What makes Perelman's story unique is not just his intelligence; it's his way of using it, his approach to problems, and his near-total severance of ties with the world after all these achievements. He immortalized his name by solving the Poincaré Conjecture, one of the most important achievements in the history of mathematics. This problem was among the Millennium Problems set by the Clay Mathematics Institute:
The Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer Conjecture,
The Hodge Conjecture,
The Navier–Stokes Equations,
P vs NP,
The Riemann Hypothesis,
Yang–Mills Theory and the Mass Gap,
and the Poincaré Conjecture…

Each of these problems demands a career. There are those who dedicate their lives to them and still cannot solve them. Andrew Wiles's statement, "We don't know when these problems will be solved; maybe in 5 years, maybe in 100 years," summarizes the bitter reality of the mathematical world.

The new millennium was entered with such a challenge. And just one person announced to the world, only two years later, that he had solved a problem from this monumental list: Grigori Perelman.

And it was such a grand solution that mathematicians' admiration only grew as they examined his work. However, the real turning point in Perelman's story began after this. Because he was deemed worthy of the Fields Medal, the Nobel of mathematics, but he refused the prize. Not only that, he also turned down the promised 1 million dollar award for the solution. In the ceremony hall, among hundreds of scientists, only his seat remained empty. He chose silence over the stage lights.

This intriguing attitude led to his sudden transformation into a mysterious figure. There is no proper documentary about him, no comprehensive biography, and hardly any clear photographs. Even whether he is alive or not occasionally becomes a subject of debate. Perelman almost seems to act as if he were allergic to the very idea of "fame." He does mathematics not for a career, but in pursuit of truth. For him, the universe is an order woven with numbers; mathematics is the way to understand this order in its purest form.

Grigori Perelman, despite solving one of the world's most difficult problems, stayed away from people who wanted to applaud him. He rejected awards, money, and fame. Perhaps this was, in fact, his greatest challenge. Today, almost no one knows what he is doing, where he lives, or whether he is working on a new problem.

But this is certain: The quietest person in the history of mathematics perhaps left one of the loudest imprints. He managed to surprise the world even with his silence.

That is why calling him "The Mysterious Grigori" is not an exaggeration at all.