Russian genius and recluse turns down $1million prize: I don't want to be on display like an animal in a zoo...

An impoverished Russian who has been called the world's cleverest man today said he does not need a $1million prize awarded by a prestigious American institute for solving one of the most intractable problems in mathematics.

Dr Grigory Perelman prefers to live as a recluse in his grim cockroach-infested flat in St Petersburg.

Told about the financial prize for solving the Poincare Conjecture which had confounded mathematicians for a century, he said through his closed front door: 'I don't need anything. I have all I want.'

The bearded genius, aged 44, was named last week as winner of the $1 million prize by the Clay Mathematics Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. More...

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