> by building on an online collaboration." [...] appears to have yielded to a single mathematician." >This irks me. It didn't bother me because I don't inter

> by building on an online collaboration." [...] appears to have yielded to a single mathematician." >This irks me. It didn't bother me because I don't interpret the "collaboration" and "single mathematician" as contradictory. In other words, all mathematics is built upon group contributions whether the collaboration happens digitally online or via letters transported across 17th century continental Europe. In this case, "single mathematician" doesn't mean a person who discovered every insight and connected all the dots. Instead, it means the one who connected the last dot. So far, it looks like Tao solved the last step of the puzzle and no one else independently solved it and submitted a proof at the same time. Contrast this situation to the invention of calculus which was simultaneously created by Newton and Leibniz.