Urban legend Memes

The mathematical equivalent of those "celebrity gave me $100" stories has finally emerged. Nothing says "completely legitimate tale" like a pop star randomly gifting topological manifolds to crying children. For those unacquainted with this particular corner of mathematics, the Poincaré conjecture was one of the most notoriously difficult problems in topology, unsolved for nearly a century until Grigori Perelman cracked it in 2003. Clearly, all he needed was Beyoncé's 3-manifold and some inspirational advice. Next week: Taylor Swift solves the Riemann hypothesis by gifting a random teenager some complex zeta functions.