Disir
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- Sep 30, 2011
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Sometime on the morning of 30 August 2012, Shinichi Mochizuki quietly posted four papers on his website.
The papers were huge — more than 500 pages in all — packed densely with symbols, and the culmination of more than a decade of solitary work. They also had the potential to be an academic bombshell. In them, Mochizuki claimed to have solved the abc conjecture, a 27-year-old problem in number theory that no other mathematician had even come close to solving. If his proof was correct, it would be one of the most astounding achievements of mathematics this century and would completely revolutionize the study of equations with whole numbers.
Mochizuki, however, did not make a fuss about his proof. The respected mathematician, who works at Kyoto University's Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences (RIMS) in Japan, did not even announce his work to peers around the world. He simply posted the papers, and waited for the world to find out.
....Eventually, researchers hope, someone will be willing not only to understand the work, but also to make it understandable to others — the problem is, few want to be that person.
The biggest mystery in mathematics: Shinichi Mochizuki and the impenetrable proof
It is lonely at the top.
The papers were huge — more than 500 pages in all — packed densely with symbols, and the culmination of more than a decade of solitary work. They also had the potential to be an academic bombshell. In them, Mochizuki claimed to have solved the abc conjecture, a 27-year-old problem in number theory that no other mathematician had even come close to solving. If his proof was correct, it would be one of the most astounding achievements of mathematics this century and would completely revolutionize the study of equations with whole numbers.
Mochizuki, however, did not make a fuss about his proof. The respected mathematician, who works at Kyoto University's Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences (RIMS) in Japan, did not even announce his work to peers around the world. He simply posted the papers, and waited for the world to find out.
....Eventually, researchers hope, someone will be willing not only to understand the work, but also to make it understandable to others — the problem is, few want to be that person.
The biggest mystery in mathematics: Shinichi Mochizuki and the impenetrable proof
It is lonely at the top.
