So Science named the Poincaré conjecture proof as the "breakthrough of the year." I got my year-end Discover a couple of weeks ago, and they said this:
If, in the year 2100, DISCOVER runs a feature on the top advances in science in the 21st century, the proof of the Poincaré conjecture is still likely to be the number-one sory in mathematics.
I thought that was really funny, because they made it only number 8 for the year! "Sucks to be a mathematician," I thought!
The number two breakthrough, according to Science was paleometagenomics (including the Neandertal genome), that managed a short mention in Discover's number 7 ranked story. I'm bringing this up because I predicted it in my 2006 New Year's predictions.
I'll be reviewing my predictions and making 2007 predictions next week -- right now it looks like I did pretty well on the solid ones, and downright poorly on the speculative ones.
