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A professor's work on prime numbers could solve a 150-year-old puzzle in math
- warent 4y agoI would change the title from "150 year old puzzle" to the actual name "Riemann Hypothesis" I'm just a layman, not a Mathematician, and even I know how big of a deal this is. 150 year old math puzzle doesn't sound very profound or important to me, but if he actually found some proof to the Riemann Hypothesis... OMG
- okintheory 4y agoEarlier discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33512338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33512338 This isn't work directly on RH, but something in that direction.
- klyrs 4y agoTo generalize two results*, Zhang has a nice approach to hard problems: he's looking at relaxed versions of them. If his approach to this problem is sound, we can expect Gowers et al to follow it up with tighter bounds. I wouldn't expect this to solve RH, but it's a major step in that direction where we have seen no movement for a very long time. * one verified, one in review
- wenbin 4y ago> Who is Zhang Yitang? > Born in 1955, Zhang could not attend school and taught himself mathematics at the age of 11. He worked in the fields and factories for several years to make his way to Peking University, where he earned his master's degree in 1984. > Zhang then moved to the U.S. to get a Ph.D. in mathematics from Purdue University. Failing to get himself a job, Zhang then worked as an accountant, a restaurant manager, and even a food delivery person before getting a position to teach pre-algebra and calculus at the University of New Hampshire in 1999, the SCMP report said. > In 2013, Zhang shocked the world with his twin prime conjecture, which proposed that there were an infinite pair of prime numbers that differed by two. Prior to this, Zhang had achieved only one publication. 29 year old (1984) - Got master degree. 44 year old (1999) - Got first academic job.
- harveywi 4y agoCalling it now: The hollywoodified hagiographic biopic of Zhang Yitang will feature him having a sudden mathematical epiphany during his shift at a Subway restaurant. While filling an order for a ham and turkey sub, he is struck by the insight: >"Ham sandwich...Tukey sandwich...STONE-TUKEY HAM SANDWICH!!!" At which point he sprays the equations onto the restaurant wall with a squeeze bottle of mayonnaise.
- racl101 4y agoCue the Hans Zimmer OR Ross and Reznor score.
- nk_kolja 4y agoThe linked article mentions the Riemann hypothesis, but the author claims to have proven the Landau-Siegel conjecture https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03689-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03689-2, which is weaker than the Riemann hypothesis. An impressive result, nevertheless (if confirmed to be valid).
- dang 4y agoRecent and related: Monumental (if correct) advance in number theory posted to ArXiv by Yitang Zhang - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33512338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33512338 - Nov 2022 (416 comments) Mathematician who solved prime-number riddle claims new breakthrough - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33569029 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33569029 - Nov 2022 (16 comments)
- est 4y agopreviously https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33569029 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33569029