Has a Chinese-born professor discovered a big piece to a 150-year-old maths puzzle?

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Zhang Yitang, who has a reputation for solving perplexing problems in number theory, is set to reveal his latest work soon

Experts think the new paper could have crucial implications for mathematics

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Dr. Zhang Yitang, who has a reputation for solving perplexing equations, is set to reveal his latest work soon, and experts say it could have big implications for a branch of mathematics. Photo: Aynsley Floyd

Ling Xinin Beijing

Published: 9:00am, 8 Nov 2022Updated: 1:04pm, 8 Nov 2022

The usually solitary, hermetic world of mathematics has begun to buzz – thanks to an unassuming Chinese-born mathematician with a reputation for solving the unsolvable.

Sixty-seven-year-old Yitang Zhang may have taken a key step towards understanding the most important unsolved problem in mathematics, a problem that has vexed academics for more than a century.

More than 20 years ago, Zhang, now a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, began to tackle a conjecture related to the Riemann hypothesis, a formula for the distribution of prime numbers.

On Saturday, a 111-page manuscript that seems to have been written by Zhang, began to circulate in the research community. The article showed a proof related to the Riemann hypothesis.

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Making maths sexy: Taiwanese teacher puts hardcore calculus classes on Pornhub

The paper, “Discrete mean estimates and the Landau-Siegel zero”, has neither been peer reviewed nor confirmed by Zhang himself, but if verified, it could be a historic breakthrough for number theory and mathematics in general, according to experts.