The Millennium Problems: The Seven Greatest Unsolved Mathematical Puzzles of Our Time.KEITH DEVLIN Keith J. Devlin is an English mathematician and writer. He currently is Executive Director of Stanford University's Center for the Study of Language and Information and a Consulting Professor of mathematics at Stanford. Just over 100 years ago in Paris, German mathematician David Hilbert Noun 1. David Hilbert - German mathematician (1862-1943) Hilbert challenged his colleagues to conquer the most significant unsolved math problems of the day. There were 23 on Hilbert's list, which shaped the course of mathematics and brought fame to those who solved them. By 2000, all but one had been cracked. That set the stage for a new challenge brought by the Clay Mathematics Institute The Clay Mathematics Institute (CMI) is a private, non-profit foundation, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Institute is dedicated to increasing and disseminating mathematical knowledge. It gives out various awards and sponsorships to promising mathematicians. . This group announced a prize of $1 million to be awarded for each solution of seven new problems now known as the Millennium Problems. Specifically, they are the Riemann hypothesis There is also the Riemann hypothesis for curves over finite fields. The Riemann hypothesis (also called the Riemann zeta-hypothesis), first formulated by Bernhard Riemann in 1859, is one of the most famous and important unsolved problems in mathematics. , which lingers from Hilbert's list, Yang-Mills theory and the mass gap hypothesis, the P Versus NP problem, the Navier-Stokes equations, the Poincaire conjecture, the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture In mathematics, the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture relates the rank of the abelian group of points over a number field of an elliptic curve E to the order of zero of the associated L-function L(E, s) at s = 1. , and the Hodge conjecture. Devlin profiles each problem and offers insight into how it came about and its significance. Basic, 2002, 237 p., b&w illus., hardcover, $26.00. |
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