Hilarie, aka The Purple Streak, writes: << The August 28 New Yorker has an article by Sylvia Nasar and David Gruber about the mathematicians who have contributed to the proof of the Poincare' conjecture: Hamilton the playboy, Yau of the infinite ambition, and Perelman the Pure (somehow Thurston escapes scrutiny, appearing merely as a mathematician with a brilliant conjecture). Yau comes off badly in this article. ... ... I don't think it explains the mathematical ideas particularly well ...
I read the same article, and I found it well-written and fascinating; it's still available online, at < http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060828fa_fact2 >. I'ts become quite a samizdat article among mathematicians; at least two people forwarded to me the article or link after I'd already read it (not counting Hilarie's mention of it). I thought the article did a pretty good job of explaining the mathematics, at least compared to any other article I've seen in a general publication, and especially a good job at describing the ambition and intrigue involved in claiming precedence on the "full" proof. Btw, I'm totally convinced the experts' consensus is that the Poincare conjecture is now fully settled in the affirmative; I'm not sure, however, whether the same is true of the Thurston geometrization conjecture. --Dan