正文
I can harzard some guesses of the circumstances that may have caused Yau's overturn in promoting Cao and Zhu's work in June 2006, Beijing.
1) Yau's ego: he is the one who orgainzed a group of researchers in Beijing to study Poincare conjecture a few years earlier. In the end, probably only Cao and Zhu are the only ones still working on it. Yau's ego cannot allow someone else like Perelman or worse Tian to finish off the work without his group involved. That will be like admitting his own failure of suggesting others to work on it and now see what happens, Perelman got all the award. Yau is like a god in China's math and science community now and this mistake certainly cannot happen.
2) The timing of this happening is also very interesting: He chose the string 06 conference and he had invited Stephen Hawkings and other famous scientists to his lecture to lend credibility to the Chinese media that this (Poincare proof) is a big deal and he has the support of Stephen Hawkings. (Here he played a logic trick on Chinese media: The Poincare conjecture is a big deal, but Cao and Zhu's proof is after Perelman's work, but he wouldn't want others to know, nor that there are other people including Gang Tian across the street who's writing a book about it. This logic of misleading is used again by him later on. When people asked about Asian Journal of Math is a second-tier journal, his reply was that there are many first-rate authors publishing papers on it, and it must be a first-rate journal. He also refused to reveal the referee's names of Cao and Zhu's paper, saying it is a tradition of math community that their names not be revealed. I'm doubtful that if this is such an important work, any one associated with refereering thiis paper will be glad to reveal themselves, unless....unless the referee is onlt the co-chief-editor, Yau himself.) But how is Poincare conjecture related to string theory, it's not totally clear to me. But this certainly gave him a stage and during this conference there were Chinese top leaders granting visits, so there is something to show. Yau did mention that Cao and Zhu's work is a gift for his Morningside Center of Mathematics's 10 year anniversay, but why Cao and Zhu's work has anything to do with his center, I don't know. Certainly the media coverage of Cao and Zhu's work is featured prominently in his center site. Maybe this is a way to grab media attention to the center and to him. He's very good at that, as he has always done in last few years appearing frequently in China's media coverage. (In China, media appearance of leaders is considered crucial, and Yau probably already knows this China's politics very well.)
3) IMU conference in August 2006 in Spain when Poincare conjecture proof will be annouced. I think this is very important time for Yau to have a voice that he has played a crucial role. Aka Hamilton's plenary talk during the 2006 IMU. What Yau did in Beijing is just his way of saying that he and his group deserve a big piece of the credit that goes toward solving the famous puzzle. Unfortuntely in mathematics, there is no medal even if your work is cited or used in one's paper. Maybe if there is a supporting author category in mathematics, I would think Yau and his group, along with Tian and Morgan, and others are the leading candidates for helping solve this world-famous puzzle. End of my story.
1) Yau's ego: he is the one who orgainzed a group of researchers in Beijing to study Poincare conjecture a few years earlier. In the end, probably only Cao and Zhu are the only ones still working on it. Yau's ego cannot allow someone else like Perelman or worse Tian to finish off the work without his group involved. That will be like admitting his own failure of suggesting others to work on it and now see what happens, Perelman got all the award. Yau is like a god in China's math and science community now and this mistake certainly cannot happen.
2) The timing of this happening is also very interesting: He chose the string 06 conference and he had invited Stephen Hawkings and other famous scientists to his lecture to lend credibility to the Chinese media that this (Poincare proof) is a big deal and he has the support of Stephen Hawkings. (Here he played a logic trick on Chinese media: The Poincare conjecture is a big deal, but Cao and Zhu's proof is after Perelman's work, but he wouldn't want others to know, nor that there are other people including Gang Tian across the street who's writing a book about it. This logic of misleading is used again by him later on. When people asked about Asian Journal of Math is a second-tier journal, his reply was that there are many first-rate authors publishing papers on it, and it must be a first-rate journal. He also refused to reveal the referee's names of Cao and Zhu's paper, saying it is a tradition of math community that their names not be revealed. I'm doubtful that if this is such an important work, any one associated with refereering thiis paper will be glad to reveal themselves, unless....unless the referee is onlt the co-chief-editor, Yau himself.) But how is Poincare conjecture related to string theory, it's not totally clear to me. But this certainly gave him a stage and during this conference there were Chinese top leaders granting visits, so there is something to show. Yau did mention that Cao and Zhu's work is a gift for his Morningside Center of Mathematics's 10 year anniversay, but why Cao and Zhu's work has anything to do with his center, I don't know. Certainly the media coverage of Cao and Zhu's work is featured prominently in his center site. Maybe this is a way to grab media attention to the center and to him. He's very good at that, as he has always done in last few years appearing frequently in China's media coverage. (In China, media appearance of leaders is considered crucial, and Yau probably already knows this China's politics very well.)
3) IMU conference in August 2006 in Spain when Poincare conjecture proof will be annouced. I think this is very important time for Yau to have a voice that he has played a crucial role. Aka Hamilton's plenary talk during the 2006 IMU. What Yau did in Beijing is just his way of saying that he and his group deserve a big piece of the credit that goes toward solving the famous puzzle. Unfortuntely in mathematics, there is no medal even if your work is cited or used in one's paper. Maybe if there is a supporting author category in mathematics, I would think Yau and his group, along with Tian and Morgan, and others are the leading candidates for helping solve this world-famous puzzle. End of my story.
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