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He didn't get into the news because he didn't solve a problem for which a famous mathematician (Ronald Graham) had offered a prize. Also, it's somewhat more ex
by John_Baez 10y ago
He didn't get into the news because he didn't solve a problem for which a famous mathematician (Ronald Graham) had offered a prize. Also, it's somewhat more exciting to use a huge calculation to answer a yes-or-no question that anyone can understand, rather than to count a huge number of fairly obscure gadgets: semigroups of size 10.
(Personally I love semigroups, and I think it's cool that you counted all the ones of size 10. But any story about them in the popular press would focus on the sheer size of the calculation rather than what it actually achieved.)