Mathematics has a slew of equations and hypotheses so complex that no one has been able to deduce them for centuries. But now, one renowned mathematician claims he¡¯s solved one of the most convoluted of them all, winning a million dollar prize in the process.
Sir Michael Atiyah has already won the Fields Medal and the Abel Prize, two of the highest honours in mathematics. Now, he¡¯s put forward a claim before the Heidelberg Laureate Forum in Germany, saying he¡¯s solved another math mystery, that of the Riemann hypothesis. If his claims stand proven once investigated, he stands to win a prize of $1 million for his efforts.
The Riemann Hypothesis is devilishly complex. Suffice it to say that, if Atiyah has truly succeeded, it would let us predict the occurrence of every prime number. This is despite the fact they¡¯re widely regarded as being randomly distributed across the number line. If other scientists can confirm his work, Atiyah stands to win the cash prize from the Clay Mathematics Institute of Cambridge (CMI).
Phys.org
The Riemann hypothesis is one of seven unsolved ¡°Millennium Prizes¡± from CMI, each worth $1 million. First posited by Bernhard Riemann in 1859, it states that prime numbers (numbers only divisible by themselves and one, like 2,3,5,7), are not distributed randomly, but might follow a pattern. Scientists have so far checked 10 trillion prime numbers and found them consistent with this hypothesis, but there¡¯s until now been no way to prove that every prime number follows this pattern.
Because of how renowned he is in the field, mathematicians didn¡¯t immediately write off his claims. However, because of its complexity, they remain skeptical until it¡¯s been proven for sure.?