Between 1994 and 2006, the Russian mathematician Grigori Perelman solved three of the most famous and difficult problems in mathematics. His proofs were "astonishingly concise" but also difficult to confirm because of their originality and technical sophistication. After understandable delays, mathematicians working in the highest echelons of academia published their findings in specialized periodicals. The verdict was unanimous: Perelman had solved the soul theorem of Riemannian geometry, Thurston's geometrization conjecture and the Poincare conjecture. It is no surprise that prestigious awards followed, among them the Fields Medal and the Clay Millennium Prize with its million dollar reward. What is surprising is that Perelman crabbily refused them all. This did not sit well with everyone. In 2006, Sir John Ball, president of the International Mathematical Union, flew to Saint Petersburg on a mission to change Perelman's mind. After 10 hours of attempted persuasion over two days, Ball gave up. "If the proof is correct," Perelman obstinately replied to every line of argument, "that is all the recognition I need." He also said, "I do not want to be on display like an animal in the zoo." And of the million dollars: "I have everything I need." A cynic might wonder if Perelman's decision to refuse accolades was designed to engineer an aura of mystique. In a like case, our opinion of Jean-Paul Sartre's decision to turn down the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964 ("I do not want to be institutionalized," said Sartre) may be tainted by the suspicion of ideological grandstanding. It is also obvious that Thomas Pynchon's extreme mediaphobia has provoked far more discussion about his personal life than would have resulted if he had once allowed himself to be interviewed on television or even photographed by a journalist; and plausible, too, that this is for Pynchon the ironic, welcome and intended outcome of his reticence. But with Perelman it is different. Unlike Sartre and Pynchon, Perelman is not a distinguished public intellectual writing and publishing for the titillation of an established readership. (“The vulgar man is always the most distinguished," noted Chesterton, "for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.”) Perelman is unemployed (he has been offered and has refused professorships at famous universities) and lives with his mother. He was not even going to publish his historic proofs; and when he did, it was to arXiv: an open-access, online repository for scientific papers. This surmise is corroborated by the different quality of Perelman's own mediaphobia; and, more specifically, by his curmudgeonly and delightful response to one journalist who managed to get hold of him on his mobile. Perelman did not protest the vacuity of the media or the unjust polity of professional academia. Nor did he explain his own absolute purity of purpose--though what he did say proves this more eloquently than any explication of it could hope to do. Perelman simply told the journalist: "You are disturbing me. I am picking mushrooms."