Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I have known this for a while. Are you similarly intelligent to this person or vice versa? I am curious. How do you resemble Grigori Perelman, the Russian mathematician?

Rick Rosner: I resemble him? Wait, is he the individual who ceased cutting his hair? Is he the one who declined the prize?

Jacobsen: He turned down the Fields Medal for solving the 300-year-old Poincaré conjecture.

Rosner: Does that individual not appear dishevelled?

Jacobsen: He does not in every picture.

Rosner: Well, you are comparing me to someone who appears unkempt — a little unkempt, like beardy, long hair, and a bit on the older side. Hold on. Let me get my glasses and see what he looks like to determine whether I should be insulted or not.

Jacobsen: Here. I will send you a picture.

Rosner: Okay, I still need to get my glasses.

Jacobsen: So, to fill some of the space while you are getting those glasses, he won the Saint Petersburg Mathematical Society Prize in 1981, the EMS Prize in 1986, the Fields Medal in 2006, and the Millennium Prize in 2010. He declined the last three of those.

Rosner: Yes.

Jacobsen: Including the monetary rewards.

Rosner: I’m going to see what he looks like. He spells it with an “I.” Well, the individual has no hair.

Jacobsen: What?

Rosner: I am insulted.

Jacobsen: I know. I sent you a different picture, the one from Wikipedia.

Rosner: Perhaps. I mean, the individual has no hair. I spent a significant amount of money to retain my hair. So, his eyes were, and he had large eyebrows. I have large eyebrows. His eyes are wide-set. It is not that, in this picture, it may be too close to the camera. I do not know because I do not resemble him that much. Everyone with a beard and dark hair tends to look similar. I do not know; he is probably Jewish. So that is likely part of it. He is probably Ashkenazi. I am almost entirely Ashkenazi. He is from Russia. I am from Lithuania and Romania. So, that is the only reason we come from the same gene pool. And I do not resemble him that much.

Jacobsen: Okay, okay. I will not press the issue. He was born in 1966 to Jewish parents in Leningrad, Soviet Union.

Rosner: All right, so if you go back 12 generations, we have relatives in common, likely in the 1600s or 1700s.

Jacobsen: One relative and I have one final question for the session.

Rosner: Well, actually, if you have one relative in common, then you have every relative before them in common. But anyway.

Jacobsen: One last question. Who do you think you resemble?

Rosner: Carlos Santana is a pretty close match. Though again…

Jacobsen: I saw him live.

Rosner: What?

Jacobsen: My friend, Karen, we went out and saw Carlos Santana live in Vancouver. Let me pull up a picture of Carlos Santana and see if I remember correctly. He has oily hair, a slicked back, and a mustache or a beard. And he is Mexican-born.

Rosner: Yes, I do not know. So. He usually does not have a beard. So, but around the eyes. Yes, I resemble him.

Jacobsen: Any final comments on that session?

Rosner: No, I mean, sometimes I have the eyes of Pierce Brosnan and a superficial resemblance when he has a beard, but of course, he is much better looking than I am. But sometimes, when I am kempt, I can look presentable.

Jacobsen: There you go.

Rosner: All right, so Carole has a question for another session.

—

Rick Rosner, American Television Writer, http://www.rickrosner.org

Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Independent Journalist, http://www.in-sightpublishing.com

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at http://www.rickrosner.org.

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