More on Perelman and arXiv

Chris Philipp, Reclusive mathematician rejected honors for solving 100-year-old math problem, but he relied on Cornell's arXiv to publish, Cornell Chronicle Online. Excerpt:

The solution to one of the most famous problems in mathematics was posted on Cornell's arXiv over an eight-month period, beginning in November 2002. Today, arXiv remains its only home.

Most scientists and researchers who post research on arXiv -- an open-access repository for e-print postings operated by Cornell University Library -- also submit it for publication in traditional peer-reviewed journals. But famously reclusive Russian mathematician Grigori Perelman's decision to post his proof of the 100-year-old Poincaré Conjecture solely in arXiv was decidedly unorthodox.

Yet Perelman's action underscores the repository's increasing importance in the fields of physics, math and computer science...

"What is unusual about this, and certainly for anything this significant, is that Perelman apparently has no intent of publishing in the classical way, but has chosen the arXiv as the sole method of communication," said R. Keith Dennis, a math professor and adviser to the Mathematics Library....

With arXiv, Cornell Library provides fast, free and open access to scientific literature, serving the fields of physics, mathematics, nonlinear science, computer sciences and quantitative biology...

All four recipients of the Fields Medal, which is awarded every four years, are regular arXiv contributors, including Terrence Tao, who is also one of its moderators. There are over 20 million full-text downloads from the server per year, and it currently hosts more than 380,000 articles, with a submission rate of 4,000 per month.

"Everybody reads it," said Paul Ginsparg, Cornell professor of physics and of computing and information science who developed the repository while working at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1991. "[Perelman] put it there precisely to reach a wide audience." ...

arXiv has transformed how material is shared, making science more democratic and allowing for the rapid dissemination of scientific findings....

PS:  For background, see my 8/22/06 post on Perelman and arXiv.