Sir John Ball, president of the International Mathematical Union, approached Perelman in Saint Petersburg in June 2006 to persuade him to accept the prize. After 10 hours of persuasion over two days, he gave up. Two weeks later, Perelman summed up the conversation as follows: "He 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."[10] "'I'm not interested in money or fame,' he is quoted to have said at the time. 'I don't want to be on display like an animal in a zoo. I'm not a hero of mathematics. I'm not even that successful; that is why I don't want to have everybody looking at me.'" So Russian, so christian...
He had previously turned down a prestigious prize from the European Mathematical Society,[20] allegedly saying that he felt the prize committee was unqualified to assess his work, even positively.[16]
On 18 March 2010, Perelman was awarded a Millennium Prize for solving the problem.[21] Perelman is still contemplating whether to accept the award.[22]
Terence Tao spoke about Perelman's work on the Poincaré Conjecture during the 2006 Fields Medal Event:[23]
“ They [the Millennium Prize Problems] are like these huge cliff walls, with no obvious hand holds. I have no idea how to get to the top. [Perelman's proof of the Poincaré Conjecture] is a fantastic achievement, the most deserving of all of us here in my opinion. Most of the time in mathematics you look at something that's already been done, take a problem and focus on that. But here, the sheer number of breakthroughs...well it's amazing.
As of the spring of 2003, Perelman no longer worked at the Steklov Institute.[6] His friends are said to have stated that he currently finds mathematics a painful topic to discuss
