Get the latest tech news
A maths proof that is only true in Japan
A 500-page proof that only a handful of people in the world claim to understand kicked off a saga unlike anything else in the history of mathematics – and now there’s a new twist to the story, says Jacob Aron
Besides telling us something deep about the nature of numbers, proving the abc conjecture would, in turn, unlock a whole host of other mathematical results that rely on it – not least a fairly simple proof of the infamously tricky Fermat’s Last Theorem – so Mochizuki’s claim seemed to be a big deal. But Mochizuki’s refusal to leave Japan to attend international conferences or engage with the wider world – he has never responded to a request for interview by New Scientist, for example – meant that most mathematicians simply didn’t want to devote the time to learning a theory that might not pay off. Since the formal publication, Mochizuki’s supporters have set up the Inter-Universal Geometry Center to promote IUT and even launched a $1 million prize for anyone who can demonstrate that it is false – something Scholze and Stix have seemingly already done.
Or read this on Hacker News
