Ricci flow and Perelman’s proof of the Poincaré conjecture.” Current Science 91

The Poincare conjecture was one of the most fundamental unsolved problems in mathematics for close to a century. This was solved in a series of highly original preprints by the Russian mathematician Grisha Perelman, for which he was awarded the Fields medal. Perelman's proof, buliding on the work of Hamilton, was based on the Ricci ow, which resembles a non-linear heat equation. Many of Perelman's and Hamilton's fundamental ideas may be of considerable signicance in other settings. 1