Several mathematician friends of Perelman said that he had assumed that the universe was imperfect, as was our planet and human beings too, himself included. He had managed to accept this thanks to the idea that there was, to his understanding, at least one place where all things fit together: the world of advanced mathematics, a place without deception or torment, a comprehensible and rarified environment where men and women would also behave with the grace of precise and beautiful formulae.