Maths whizz solves a master’s riddle

Chris Cesare:

A mathematical puzzle that resisted solution for 80 years — including computerized attempts to crack it — seems to have yielded to a single mathematician.

Terence Tao, a mathematician at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a winner of the Fields Medal in 2006, submitted a paper1 to the arXiv preprint server on 17 September that claims to prove a number theory conjecture posed by mathematician Paul Erdős in the 1930s.

“Terry Tao just dropped a bomb,” tweeted Derrick Stolee, a mathematician at Iowa State University in Ames, the day the paper detailing the solution appeared online.