I'm writing a paper that, rather unexpectedly, needs the Poincaré conjecture for one of the results. (The paper has almost nothing to do with differential geometry!)
The conjecture was famously proved at the beginning of the century by Perelman, in a series of three papers. Unfortunately, I'm not a differential geometer, and I fear that if I read his papers I won't understand anything or be able to pinpoint in which one the conjecture is solved.
I'm sure that if I just write "the Poincaré conjecture, due to Perelman" in my paper everybody will understand what I'm talking about. But it still feels "normal" to cite something. So: what should I cite? Nothing? One of the three papers? All three of them? Something else?
Best Answer
I think it is customary to cite at least the first two papers ("The entropy formula for the Ricci flow and its geometric applications" and "Ricci flow with surgery on three-manifolds"). See this for an example. Together they imply the full geometrization conjecture.
The shortest proof of "just Poincare" involves the third paper, but I guess that's beyod the point.