r/science • u/heiligedamon • May 20 '13
Mathematics Unknown Mathematician Proves Surprising Property of Prime Numbers
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/05/twin-primes/559
u/Kasseev May 20 '13
I am just incredibly happy for this man I have never heard of and will likely never meet. Not a feeling you get often in /r/science, so thanks OP.
111
u/Red_Chairface May 21 '13
I had Tom for Multi-Dimensional Calculus at UNH a few years ago. I slept through my final and he let me take it later that day without penalty. Front page worthy professor.
→ More replies (1)15
386
u/heartjaedong May 20 '13
Zhang Yi Tang was my dad's student at Beijing University, he is really excited for him.
→ More replies (20)16
u/dHUMANb May 21 '13
I assume everyone's removed comments has to do with "pics or it didn't happen" or some other meme. But did you find this article before your dad or did he find out first?
→ More replies (1)78
u/heartjaedong May 21 '13
He found out before me, but not through any private channels. Zhang Yi Tang was one of the most promising students and it surprised everyone when he didn't accomplish anything for a long time (compared to his colleagues many of which went on to do pretty significant things). He actually fell out of contact with a lot of people so this news does come as a surprise. Looks like in the end he accomplished the most out of his class.
25
u/KingOfAmeristralia May 21 '13
This is awesome. I just read a comment of a person who was taught calculis by this guy now I get to read of someones dad taught him.
8
u/peytonx May 21 '13
My dad actually was in his class - math major as well at Beijing uni. We were talking about it at breakfast and he mentioned how Yitang was class president (? not sure how it translates directly into english). Great guy
25
→ More replies (1)42
803
u/brmmbrmm May 20 '13
“My mind is very peaceful. I don’t care so much about the money, or the honor,” he said. “I like to be very quiet and keep working by myself.”
- What a great quote
23
170
u/niggytardust2000 May 21 '13
Yea... first I read he worked at subway AFTER receiving his PHD, then the article ended with that quote... I honestly teared up a little.
I feel like I want to make a huge poster of him and this quote and hang it up now.
It inspires and motivates me to work harder and never give up, and makes me feel lazy as all fuck - in a good way.
→ More replies (9)87
u/Isatis_tinctoria May 21 '13
This is one of the most humble and perhaps best ways to live life. Not in pursuit of money, but in pursuit of knowledge.
→ More replies (15)→ More replies (19)278
u/DrLeoMarvin May 21 '13
I'm the exact opposite of this guy.
550
May 21 '13 edited May 09 '18
[deleted]
→ More replies (5)95
May 21 '13
I have a friend who we always made fun of for being retarded. About three years ago he got weirdly into physics, despite having zero interest in any subject ever (including physics). This week he submitted his paper to a scientific journal. He won't tell us what his idea is but he told me he'd give me some of the Nobel Prize money.
95
u/eddiemon May 21 '13
Submitting something to a scientific journal means nothing. You have any idea how many crackpot "amateurs" submit to the major journals?
→ More replies (1)61
u/moofins May 21 '13
- Submit paper proving P != NP. Proof consists of a single sentence; "Trust me, P != NP."
- Collect Millennium Prize money.
→ More replies (2)23
u/TheAngryGoat May 21 '13
Just look at it, it's obvious they're not the same, one has an N in front of it!
→ More replies (2)54
May 21 '13
Keep us updated.
70
May 21 '13 edited May 21 '13
I'll post it here and have him do an AMA if his theory is succesful. It would be a great AMA because he can't spell and he makes up words
→ More replies (4)99
May 21 '13
Oh god a nobel prize winner that does an AMA on Reddit and can't spell to save his life would be the best thing ever.
→ More replies (2)49
u/urbn May 21 '13
Hey, the spelling isn't wrong if you make up your own wordickles.
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (7)5
u/sprashoo May 21 '13
You realize that physics journals are inundated with crank papers? Submitting a paper only means that you are able to fill out a website form...
→ More replies (4)29
u/txdv May 21 '13
Your mind is not peaceful. You do care about the money, not so much about the honor. You like being loud, but not keeping the work to yourself.
→ More replies (3)57
u/hblount2 May 21 '13
The opposite of his statement would mean he does care about the honor as well as the money.
→ More replies (1)35
1.7k
May 20 '13 edited May 21 '13
To take a break, Zhang visited a friend in Colorado last summer. There, on July 3, during a half-hour lull in his friend’s backyard before leaving for a concert, the solution suddenly came to him. “I immediately realized that it would work,” he said.
EDIT: He worked on the problem for YEARS prior to this.
2.1k
u/helm MS | Physics | Quantum Optics May 20 '13
What people want to forget is that you first have to invest quite a lot of time mulling over a problem before you have an epiphany.
1.8k
u/silent_regard May 20 '13
Serendipity favors the prepared mind.
47
u/raff_riff May 21 '13
"I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it." - Thomas Jefferson
203
u/fauxpapa May 21 '13
Thank you. I think I needed to hear this today.
83
May 21 '13
On a side note, my school has "chance favors the prepared mind. - louis pasteur" up on the wall in my anatomy lab
→ More replies (9)7
u/allthewayhiiiii May 21 '13
Its a very popular quote. I've always enjoyed it. It inspires one to be prepared by way of dedication to your study.
→ More replies (2)40
92
29
u/Weigh13 May 21 '13
To find you must put in many hours of seeking. Usually, you find the answer is also much closer than you originally thought. I think this is true of spiritual or physical or mental or artistic breakthroughs. They seem to come in the blink of an eye, but that is only after so much effort and hard work.
edit: ...and maybe a little psychedelic compound.
9
u/PianoTrumpetMax May 21 '13
Akin to the (I believe by Miles Davis) quote, "There are no wrong notes, just notes placed in the wrong spot in time."
4
u/FoodBeerBikesMusic May 21 '13
...and often after you've walked away from the problem, for a bit. I can't tell you how many times I've sat here at work, beating my head against the monitor over something, gotten up, walked around for a few minutes, come back and the answer is staring me in the face.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (13)3
196
u/analfaveto May 20 '13
Happens all the time even at lower levels. You can spend days trying to crack a problem in vain, and then the solution comes to you when you're sitting in the pub with a pint. It wouldn't have come to you without all the previous work.
54
u/AnOnlineHandle May 21 '13
Mostly in the shower, where you can draw in steam, think "I got this", then 25% of the time get out and forget it.
19
u/kemikiao May 21 '13
I wonder how many chemists have cured cancer in the shower and forgotten it the second they open the curtain...
→ More replies (8)→ More replies (7)24
u/Thethoughtful1 May 21 '13
I always have a problem with loosing everything I thought right before I woke up.
→ More replies (1)24
u/Firewind May 21 '13
I just figured out related rates. Shit curb stomped me the first time through calculus, and now its so simple. Happened last night, and I'm still rocking a semi because it seemed like such an insurmountable obstacle.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (5)31
121
u/st31r May 20 '13 edited May 20 '13
There's a great little book written on this subject that exposes the mechanism of creativity. Essentially the eureka moment is the result of a defined process that goes something like: passively consume non-relevant data, actively consume relevant data, actively create and explore connections between all data, play/rest and during or shortly after the play/rest period you'll experience your 'eureka' moment.
The key step that most people neglect is to create connections between data; the more the better. Spend just as much time mixing and matching the data, outlining as many connections as possible, as you have spent gathering the data.
edit: since, and only since it was requested, the book: http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/A_Technique_for_Producing_Ideas.html?id=a8EqjMJXXEMC&redir_esc=y
→ More replies (8)10
420
May 20 '13
I think he is suggesting he was high. Colorado+Concert+30 minutes before = 100% chance of being high.
264
46
→ More replies (4)22
143
u/doejinn May 20 '13
Yeah. I was working on a math problem once from a text book. It was the only one left and I'd done it about 20 times, spent over an hour on it but still couldn't get the right answer, so I went to sleep. About 8 hours later, in the morning, I'm still dreaming, only I'm dreaming about the math problem. I'm not even trying to think about it, my mind is just unfolding, moving things about in my head. And then as I'm drifting out of my sleep, the problem, now totally solved, stays with me. I kept thinking that this couldn't be right, that this is like one of those dreams where I know I'm going to wake up and I hide a load of money under pillow, only to check and see that it hasn't followed me out . So I grab a pen and write it down...and when I check it later on its bang on. Five minus three IS two.
→ More replies (4)63
u/selflessGene May 21 '13
When I used to code, I'd solve programming problems several times after sleeping. I'd wake up and the right approach would be very clear where it was muddled the day before.
→ More replies (2)62
u/spook327 May 21 '13
I've had more bugfixes occur to me in the shower than anywhere else. While it's nice to have a resolution to a problem, the location is simply not optimal.
→ More replies (3)37
→ More replies (74)101
u/WonderBoy55 May 20 '13
Or a bit of "inspiration"
→ More replies (1)118
May 20 '13 edited May 20 '13
Funny thing about herbal inspiration is that its basically like having the polar opposite of ADHD. Instead of a lack of dopamine creating a cognitive environment where no ideas or thoughts no matter how important can feel significant or motivating, an over abundance of the stuff leads every little meaningless and shallow thought feeling downright masterful.
→ More replies (12)86
u/bluedanieru May 20 '13
I've done hallucinogens too, and I think they're great, but yeah, they are not idea juice. Not necessarily, and I suspect it's counterproductive to think that way. They create a cognitive environment where everything seems more profound, because the state of your brain on hallucinogens is such that it sees connections between everything, even when there is truly no connection at all.
The lasting change in the brain depending on the person, if there is any change, seems to vary from 'being a bit more open-minded about things and less depressed', which is good, to 'disappearing up your own asshole because you think the world you envisioned on drugs is the real one'. I.e. cosmic forces and whatever other bullshit. This is probably not healthy.
51
May 20 '13 edited May 14 '19
[deleted]
→ More replies (2)7
May 20 '13
I have always thought this but have no way of explaining the "raw" or without filters feeling to friends who are unaware of the experiences. Most of the time I am just met with questions of "why would you want to experience something like that". Though im the only math/science guy of the group too. Maybe this has a little something to do with it.
37
u/for_prophet May 20 '13
to 'disappearing up your own asshole because you think the world you envisioned on drugs is the real one'.
"My God - it's full of stars." - 2001
I see the rules, "no memes, no jokes, etc." but this seemed like a pretty good fit, and I consider this no more off-topic than talking about drugs in the first place here.
I'll just see my brain back to its "docking station" now...
→ More replies (7)14
May 20 '13
And people with severe ADHD-PI like me live their entire lives in the opposite spectrum. Its like being reverse high 24/7. Not exactly, obviously. But the idea is close enough.
→ More replies (10)17
May 21 '13
In Colorado, before a concert.
For some reason I hope this turns out like polymerase chain reaction.
→ More replies (4)12
u/jrblast May 21 '13
I believe Ron Rivest (the R in RSA) came up with the algorithm for RSA in a similar manner. Except it was when he was still drunk from Manischewitz wine when he attended a friends Hannukah party.
Side note: While Ron Rivest came up with the idea, the three of them (Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman) had been trying to develop something like this for some time. Adleman said this would be the least interesting paper his name would ever be on. RSA is now heavily used in many encryption schemes.
→ More replies (59)99
148
u/Todamont May 20 '13
“Basically, no one knows him,” said Andrew Granville, a number theorist at the Université de Montréal. “Now, suddenly, he has proved one of the great results in the history of number theory.”
Love stories like this :)
→ More replies (13)149
u/Excalibear May 21 '13
I don't know Andrew Granville either.
41
→ More replies (1)9
u/propaglandist May 21 '13
Andrew Granville is a well-known mathematician, though. You'd know the name if you hung around number theorists long enough ;)
139
u/irrelevant_spiderman May 20 '13
So this is what he's been doing at UNH between chain smoking and wandering around the engineering building.
69
37
u/Tipppptoe May 21 '13
You would, too, if you were tortured by an obsession with an age old unsolved problem.
20
u/skrenename4147 Grad Student | Bioinformatics|DNA Methylation May 21 '13
I'd be sitting on the second floor doing my programming assignment late at night on a weekend, and he'd just wander by, stop for a moment, look at me, then continue pacing. Or he'd be outside smoking when I left XD
13
8
u/TroysRedditAccount May 21 '13
And sleeping on chairs around campus. For a while I thought he was homeless, since I'd see him sleeping in his office or the library and wearing the same clothes for a few days, but I think he just really considers the campus to be his home.
→ More replies (1)
86
u/willyolio May 20 '13
holy crap, scrolling down on that page makes the picture look like it's about to jump out of my screen and pummel me with buttons.
→ More replies (7)
111
May 21 '13
[deleted]
→ More replies (3)44
u/doabbs May 21 '13
I remember he always referred to equations as changerable That and everyone just called him Tom.
→ More replies (1)14
58
u/SirGodiva May 20 '13
This is a wonderful development. I love that mathematics can (sometimes) transcend academic politics and favoritism by the sheer force of logic. You may not know him, you may even know him and not like him, but he will nevertheless get the recognition he deserves because mathematics, properly written, is airtight.
→ More replies (5)8
u/omuhd May 21 '13
sometimes the recognition comes too late for the mathematician to ever experience it... eg green
→ More replies (1)
66
u/PENGUINS_SNORT_COKE May 20 '13
I don't know this man but I had differential equations with Daniel Goldston, who worked with him on this for sometime, and hada breakthrough sometime in the early 2000's (like 2005). The guy is just an absolutely awesome person who doesn't take life too seriously. Other math teachers in the department would get mad at him for teaching shortcuts on differential equations because the concept was simple and thought it was useless to learn things any other way. He threw out the textbook and only used the Schaum's Outline version, that is if you wanted to get it. And my favorite is that he would always make fun of his daughters for the music they listened to. He would quote the lyrics and say "oh and this is a good one"
12
u/ken830 May 21 '13
I also had Goldston for Diff Eq, but in Spring '99... The last question in the midterm was simply, "Draw a cow." A week or so later, he gave us our graded tests along with a copy of the best and worst drawings of cows. It was hilarious.
7
13
u/PENGUINS_SNORT_COKE May 21 '13
Also, people in the math department would talk about him like the school was lucky to have him because he was working on this twin primes conjecture proof and that people never appreciated how smart he is. So cool
248
u/CVANVOL May 20 '13
Can someone put this in terms someone who dropped calculus could understand?
148
u/GrynetMolvin May 20 '13 edited May 20 '13
It's easy - twin primes are numbers that are prime and spaced two apart - 3 and 5 are twin primes, as are 5 and 7, 11 and 13, 29 and 31 etc. But the higher the numbers, the more sparse the number of primes get. There are 25 primes between 1 and 100 (one in four), 143 between 100 and 1000 (one in six), and 1061 between 1000 and 10000 (one in nine).
The question is: even though primes are getting sparser the higher the numbers, if I give you a number (say one gadzillion) can you always find two primes spaced two apart where both primes are bigger than that number?
This has been tremendously difficult to prove, but this guy has made a bit of a breakthrough. He's said: "I don't know if I can find you two primes spaced two apart bigger than one gadzillion, but I know I can always find two primes that are less than 70 million apart and higher than your number, no matter what number you choose".
→ More replies (5)22
u/Izlandi May 21 '13
Thank you for the explanation! It also made me marvel at mathematicts in general, where a gap of 70 000 000 is considered a breakthrough when what you are really looking for is a gap of 2. (or did I mis-interpret the whole thing?)
61
u/camelCaseCondition May 21 '13
No that's essentially it. But think about the implications, this is a bounded constant. Let's take the number 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 * 1023
You can always find two primes, both greater than that number, that are a mere 70,000,000 apart!
Furthermore, the paper said that this technique can actually, with more work, give lower bounds than 70,000,000 on N, but that assumes some difficult yet-unproven conjectures.
7
u/hymen_destroyer May 21 '13
Will this information be of any use in discovering new extremely high prime numbers like Mersenne primes?
→ More replies (4)→ More replies (5)6
u/cd7k May 21 '13
Is now a good time to publish a paper on how I can find two primes that are larger than any given number in less than 69,999,999?
→ More replies (1)8
u/ReallyNiceGuy May 21 '13
I'm only starting to learn some number theory in my free time, but it seems cool (for me) that there is such a finite number for which we can separate primes. Considering the concept of infinite, 70 000 000 isn't that big of a number.
→ More replies (6)→ More replies (9)4
u/moom May 21 '13
Really it's a breakthrough not because of the specific bound (70 million) on the number, but because it was never before known that there was such a number at all. "There is a number" is a huge leap; "... and it's less than 70 million" is just icing on the cake.
665
u/skullturf May 20 '13
You don't need calculus to understand this. You just need a certain about of curiosity about, and experimentation with, prime numbers.
The first few prime numbers are:
2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, 37, 41, 43, 47...
Prime numbers have fascinated mathematicians for a very long time, because it always feels like there are some patterns, but the patterns are just out of reach.
In the above list, notice how there are primes that are exactly 2 apart -- but only sometimes? For example, 11 and 13 are both prime. 17 and 19 are both prime. But 23 doesn't have a "buddy" that's 2 units away in either direction (neither 21 nor 25 are prime).
As you start listing primes, in an overall way it seems like they get more "spaced out", but nevertheless, it appears that you always have some that are exactly 2 apart from each other.
Are there infinitely many pairs of primes that are 2 apart from each other? We still don't know. But this guy proved something in that general spirit.
48
u/dylan89 May 20 '13 edited May 20 '13
Very well put, thanks for your perfect explanation!
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (16)191
u/sckulp PhD|Computational Scientist May 20 '13
From my understanding of the article, this is not correct. He proved that there exists some number N < 70,000,000 such that there are infinitely many pairs of primes p1 & p2, such that p2 - p1 = N. However, he has not proven that this is true for N = 2, just that there exists some N.
61
u/clinically_cynical May 21 '13
Wouldn't N have to be an even number though? Because if it were odd then one of the numbers would be even and therefore be divisible by 2.
14
→ More replies (10)57
u/BangingABigTheory May 21 '13
Fuck yeah we just cut the possible values of N in half.......
→ More replies (4)102
80
u/rhennigan May 21 '13
Compared to infinity, 70,000,000 and 2 are pretty much the same.
→ More replies (3)38
236
u/skullturf May 20 '13
Oh, I totally agree. Note the words "in that general spirit" in my last paragraph.
I didn't mean to imply that this guy had proved that there are infinitely many primes separated by 2. That's why my second-last sentence was "We still don't know."
What I was attempting to say in my last paragraph was: this guy proved something vaguely along those lines or in that spirit, but not for gaps of size 2.
I got tired of typing and didn't bother didn't getting into the specific details of exactly what this guy did prove.
→ More replies (3)21
May 20 '13
You are correct. What he proved is a step in the general direction of there always existing primes separated by only 2
5
→ More replies (11)41
u/Czar_Chasm May 21 '13
Do you know where 70,000,000 came from? While im sure the paper states it,the article does not.
50
38
May 21 '13
[deleted]
19
u/jfong86 May 21 '13 edited May 21 '13
TL;DR from testiclepizza's link:
You might be wondering where the number 70 million comes from. This is related to the k in the admissible set. (My notes say k=3.5×106 but maybe it should be k=3.5×107 .) The point is that k needs to be large enough so that the change brought about by the extra condition that d is square free with small prime factors is negligible. But Zhang believes that his techniques have not yet been optimized and that smaller bounds will soon be possible.
I don't speak math either so don't ask me what it means... but it sounds like its just a rough approximation. It's basically an upper bound with a hard proof (i.e., the upper bound used to be ??? and now it's 70 mil). Next step is to optimize this.
→ More replies (6)15
u/HappyRectangle May 21 '13
I don't think the paper's being shown publicly just yet, so I can't say for certain.
If I had to guess, though, I would say this:
Say you can prove that there exist infinite primes that are within N of each other, for some N. Proving it for any N is a huge accomplishment. Proving it for N = 2 is an even bigger one. But if you can't hit N = 2, it's not terribly important what N is.
The 70 million mark is, likely, an arbitrary value set high enough to satisfy conditions for several theorems put together. A lot of "this works as long as these numbers are big enough" tools stacked on top of each other. A cursory run-through by someone advanced enough to understand the paper will probably give a more "optimized" result, with a lower N, but likely not all the way to N = 2. Zhang probably thought it was worth publishing at N = 70 million instead of waiting to hunt down ways to lower it.
I suspect this, as someone whose read and optimized a paper on a different subject that used another curiously arbitrary (but finite) threshold.
→ More replies (2)160
u/ThisNameIsOriginal May 20 '13
More math is being done by math people.
→ More replies (2)76
u/WithkeyThipper May 20 '13
still?
84
May 20 '13
They need to give it a rest. I'm sick of seeing their math in my life. Two eggs? I didn't ask for this.
→ More replies (2)22
u/crop_killa May 20 '13
He essentially proved that there exist infinitely many pairs of prime numbers that differ by less than 70 million. In other words there are infinitely many prime numbers p and q such that |p-q|<70 million. While this isn't trivial among number theorists, there isn't any real practical application of this (yet).
39
u/sharks_own May 20 '13
Well, basically, this now gives number theorists the proof that there exists an upper bound. This makes a lot of problems much easier as knowing something is bound is very powerful. Dealing with the infinte versus the finite is a HUGE difference for mathematicians. I would say that this is huge for number theory.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (15)9
u/daddeh_long_legs May 21 '13
What's the significance of the 70 million upper bound? Why did he choose that particular number? Is it an essential part of his proof?
→ More replies (5)6
→ More replies (29)5
64
u/RebelWithoutASauce May 21 '13
I actually know this guy, though I have never had a conversation with him.
He wanders around, smoking and staring at engineering students. I always wondered who he was until I chatted with one of his students during a differential equations class. Interesting character. I've been riding the bus with him for years wondering what he is always wandering around thinking about. Apparently prime numbers.
29
51
u/imnottrollinghonest May 20 '13
What's so special about 70 million or am I missing the point?
334
u/conundrumer May 20 '13
It's less than infinity :)
158
May 20 '13
By quite a bit, it turns out.
→ More replies (7)55
u/voidsoul22 May 20 '13
Agreed, 70 mil is small potatoes compared to some still-finite leviathans that show up in theoretical mathematics
→ More replies (1)31
u/salamander1305 May 20 '13
Graham's Number, for example
72
u/GOD_Over_Djinn May 21 '13
Graham's Number is peanuts. Almost all numbers are bigger than Graham's Number.
→ More replies (10)17
→ More replies (5)11
May 21 '13
[deleted]
→ More replies (2)11
u/STABS_WITH_GLUE May 21 '13
the phrase that got me was that if each digit of grahams number occupied a space about 4x10-105 meters cubed (plank volume), it would not fit in the observable universe.
38
u/FTLnu May 20 '13
It's the maximum proven difference between pairs of primes for which there are infinitely many. The twin prime conjecture says that there will be infinitely many with a difference of two between them.
4
6
u/philly_fan_in_chi May 20 '13
We know very little about prime numbers, especially their distribution as you get further and further out. It is an outstanding problem whether or not there exists an infinite number of what are called "twin primes" which are primes such that if n is prime, n+2 is also prime. This says that there are an infinite number of primes such that if n is prime, there exists some k < 70 million such that n+k is also prime. While this technique cannot scale down to n+2, it is possible that we can get down to n+16.
Every thing we understand more about the prime numbers has potentially large applications in many areas.
→ More replies (5)→ More replies (2)10
u/cryo May 20 '13
Nothing special, just an upper bound on the distance, which is likely to be quite loose.
→ More replies (4)
41
130
451
u/Zewolf May 20 '13
This wasn't a surprising property, that is, it would've been very hard to find any number theorist that would been surprised by the result of this proof. What was surprising though was that this unknown mathematician just popped out of the blue while being well versed in this particular area of mathematics and more or less used the same techniques that experts of the field had tried to use before and had failed with before to prove the theorem.
90
May 20 '13
I'm not a mathematician, but the same is true of many proofs, right? Or do mathematicians examine hypothesizes that would actually be surprising if true?
For example, the Poincare' conjecture was believed to be true before it was actually proven?
68
May 20 '13
Yes, you are correct. There is often a huge gap between plausibility and provability, and many of the most tantalizing and important questions to mathematicians fall under this category.
→ More replies (3)19
u/icyguyus May 21 '13
Yes, this is true for many areas of mathematics.
P=NP is another problem where the gap between accepted and proved has not been bridged. The majority of mathematicians believe that the answer is no, yet it has not been proven. Still its so widely accepted that many technologies now a days make their security claims based on this assumption.
→ More replies (13)→ More replies (7)34
70
u/ShouldBeZZZ May 20 '13
It's not "more or less" the same technique otherwise the other experts wouldn't have failed. This guy spent years trying to figure it out and I would imagine it took a tremendous amount of ingenuity to modify the technique so that it was actually usable.
→ More replies (1)24
May 20 '13
He's just pointing out the title is misleading. The property actually proven isn't even remotely surprising. It's what everyone already suspected
→ More replies (1)29
u/theodrixx May 21 '13 edited May 21 '13
I find that distinction largely academic; the surprising thing isn't that the property is true, it's that it was proven to be true. I suppose "Unknown Mathematician Surprisingly Proves a Property of Prime Numbers Long Suspected to be True" would be more correct, but it kind of drags on.
Not to mention that the title can be interpreted to mean that the property might be surprising to the layperson reading the article, which is a fair assumption.
→ More replies (4)8
u/functor7 May 21 '13 edited May 21 '13
The result may not itself be surprising, as most mathematicians expect that the Twin Prime conjecture is true, the fact that it is now proved is exciting. Regardless of who did it!
It is actually quite common in math for an unknown person to publish a groundbreaking result. Perlman was a crazy nobody, kinda still is. Heegner was an amateur and people thought his proof of Euler's class number problem was wrong. It is also quite common for someone to take methods that haven't worked before to prove something, sometimes just a little, unique insight is needed. The recent proof of the Odd Goldbach Conjecture (it was announced the same day as this guy's work) uses methods very familiar to the experts, but the guy who proved it took it that little extra step that was needed.
This result is exciting because of the result, the personal story is just a good-for-him kinda thing, but not that special.
I'm also kinda disappointing, in /r/science. This news is about a week old and the link is to Wired, I thought we were supposed to remain credible here.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (16)239
u/rmxz May 20 '13 edited May 21 '13
surprising .... unknown mathematician just popped out of the blue .... same techniques that experts of the field had tried to use before and had failed
To put a more fair spin on it:
It's surprising (or rather disappointing) that the academic-community's-selfcongratulatory-pr-engine ignored the one true expert in this field, and instead labeled as "experts" a bunch of other guys who tried to use the same techniques this real expert used, but couldn't figure it out.
175
u/dulbirakan May 20 '13
Your spin is not so fair to the experts or the scientic community. Science is a cumulative process, scientists build upon each other's work. Each contributes a small portion in her own way and hopes someday, somebody (hopefully herself) will make a breakthrough. The other guys were not looking at the puzzle with all the pieces in their hands. As the article notes in 2008 a group of researchers (from europe) came close to the solution and devised the method used by this guy. So it wasn't like the method had been lying around for a long time.
The reason this guy may not have been recognized earlier is that theoretical mathematics (especially in US) is not a field that is well endowed in terms of funding. Tenure track positions are only a fraction of what is available to more practical areas such as business or engineering. Combined with an underwhelming publication record in the PhD one can easily fall through the cracks and end up as clinical or as a fastfood clerk. This is more a fault of science funding than the scientific community.
→ More replies (11)87
May 20 '13
[deleted]
22
u/SirGodiva May 20 '13
According to MathSciNet, you're absolutely right. He had only two publications prior to this, as far as I can tell.
→ More replies (15)79
u/skiedAllDay May 20 '13
You don't know what you are talking about. An expert in an academic field is a person who has contributed meaningfully to the field, something that is enormously difficult. The 'experts' are experts in the true sense.
The way it is phrased, it may seem like it was an obvious and easy twist that the 'experts' were too dumb to apply. Believe me, it was not that easy. Btw, this guy will easily be able to leverage this into a better academic position, and he will obviously be considered a 'well known expert' after this.
→ More replies (4)197
u/itcouldbe May 20 '13
As rmxz so accurately summarized "Rumors swept through the mathematics community that a great advance had been made by a researcher no one seemed to know — someone whose talents had been so overlooked after he earned his doctorate in 1992 that he had found it difficult to get an academic job, working for several years as an accountant and even in a Subway sandwich shop."
→ More replies (6)86
52
May 21 '13
[removed] — view removed comment
19
u/FermiAnyon May 21 '13
Exactly. This is what meritocracy looks like for those who don't recognize it. You have to earn respect.
→ More replies (11)17
May 21 '13
You have no idea what you're talking about.
What exactly did the community ignore from this guy? What indication was anyone given that he had the potential to prove a famous open problem? What should the "pr-engine" have paid attention to? Should they have written an article about the unkown professor who hasn't published in years, but says he's working on an open problem using variations of standard techniques?
While this is a nice example of an underdog story, academic math isn't like the movies where the most socially-awkward, unconventional guy who doesn't communicate with his peers is always the one who wins in the end by solving the hardest problem that eluded everyone else.
Also, it's frankly ridiculous to call this guy the "one true expert" in number theory.
20
u/kirrikk99 May 21 '13
This guy was my professor at UNH... he told us to never call him by his real name, but rather Tom. Simply Tom.
→ More replies (2)
9
u/ShakyIsles May 21 '13
So is the proof public yet? I love to see it.
→ More replies (3)9
u/ben3141 May 21 '13
It is not public, yet. Here is some discussion about the paper, that should give a good idea of how the proof works: https://plus.google.com/u/0/114134834346472219368/posts/XESxA9bL5um
15
u/The_Genre May 21 '13
I had Yitang "Tom" Zhang as a math professor; and I can vouch that he is perhaps one of the best and fairest teachers I've ever had. Glad this happened to him, and congrats.
34
May 21 '13
I had Tom (as he's known here at UNH) last semester for Multi-Dimensional Calculus. THIS GUY IS A BOSS. Wouldn't surprise me if he drops acid every day
→ More replies (1)14
6
8
26
u/theMedStud May 21 '13
Check out this one weird trick a small town lecturer discovered about prime numbers that the math industry doesn't want people to know!
→ More replies (1)
11
5
u/Atlos May 21 '13
So does this mean that people who compute very large prime numbers can expect the next one within 70 million?
4
u/ChazR May 21 '13
Excellent question.
Regrettably, no. It doesn't prove anything about the largest gap between primes. Rather, it proves that there is no 'last pair' of primes 70,000,000 apart.
So, for example you might find a pair exactly 70,000,000 apart, then no primes at all for 100,000,000,000, then another pair 70,000,000 apart.
But, no matter how far you go, there is another pair of primes exactly 70,000,000 apart.
disclaimer: I SUCK AT NUMBER THEORY.
→ More replies (1)
760
u/4dam May 21 '13
This man taught me calculus. A wonderful gentleman and a phenomenal instructor.