A Retired Mathematician Casually Solved A 160-Year-Old Math Problem That Comes With A $1 Million Prize

NBC- A famous problem in mathematics that has remained unsolved for almost 160 years probably still is — despite a new claim by a retired mathematician that he has cracked it.

Michael Atiyah, a professor emeritus at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, announced on Monday at a scientific conference in Heidelberg, Germany, that he had devised a “simple proof” for the Riemann Hypothesis, a problem relating to patterns of prime numbers that has defied efforts to solve it since it was first proposed in 1859. If Atiyah is right about his proof, he could claim a $1 million prize set aside in 2000 for the first person to prove the hypothesis. A proof of Riemann, which would provide a sort of “map” of prime numbers, could also have implications for cryptography and other fields beyond mathematics.

Look at Math Monster Michael come back like Jordan wearing the 4-5 and stunt on his competition. It must be a pretty tough day to be a professional number muncher and watch some old coot get his Will Hunting on and solve Riemann’s Hypothesis for fun. Excuse me, for one million dollars. While in RETIREMENT. What the fuck do you do if you are a professional mathematician that sentenced yourself to a life of boredom after seeing this guy cash in on that prize as his brain gathers dust while you are out in the numerical streets every day crushing equations? You have to then retire yourself, right? And even then, you don’t hold a candle to the best retired mathematician in the world.

Granted I didn’t know you could just retire from math. Does Arithmetic Atiyah have his own Frankie Borrelli at his side at all times to handle basic math like figuring out what to tip at a restaurant after a meal or how many touchdowns Pat Mahomes and Jared Goff are on pace to throw this season? Because I’m pretty sure the main reason you retire from math is because it sucks, your brain needs a rest, and a calculator is for cowards. But Michael Atiyah is out putting Riemann’s Hypothesis in his back pocket long after acknowledging the math game has passed him by, which makes this feat all the more impressive. Dude just loves grinding out answers. Meanwhile, simply reading the explanation of what the Riemann Hypothesis is caused my tiny blogger brain to hemorrhage.

The Riemann Hypothesis was first proposed by German mathematician Bernhard Riemann in a six-page paper published in 1859. It posits that there is a definite pattern to the distribution of prime numbers like 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13 and so on (numbers that can’t be expressed as the product of two smaller numbers), which occur less frequently as one moves up the number line. The hypothesis has been checked for the first 10 trillion solutions, but no one has proven that it’s true for all prime numbers.

Of course the haters and doubters in the math world that are firing shots at the throne.

But Atiyah’s peers are dubious of the claim.

“Atiyah is a wizard of a mathematician, but there’s a lot of skepticism among mathematicians that his wizardry has been sufficient to crack the Riemann Hypothesis,” John Allen Paulos, a professor of mathematics at Temple University in Philadelphia and the author of several popular books on mathematical topics, told NBC News MACH in an email.

John Baez, a mathematical physicist at the University of California, Riverside, offered an even blunter assessment. “I know of nobody who believes Atiyah has actually proved the Riemann Hypothesis,” he said in an email. “I’ve looked at his papers on this. His arguments just stack one impressive claim on top of another, without any logical argument.”

You can smell the envy, pretentiousness, and rich mahogany in every word of those quotes before each person that looks exactly like this took a sip of very expensive scotch from a glass.

I don’t think it’s any secret that the reason people get into the math game is to show off their brains on other superduper smart people. The money, power, and women will follow. But it’s strictly about showing off your big brain. And Professor A just painted his Mona Lisa on all the small baller brains years after he hung up his number 2 pencil.

Flex on them, King

Footnote: Apparently it hasn’t been proven that the Ayatollah of Algebra actually solved the equation yet.

Whether or not Atiyah has proved Riemann could take some time to figure out. Even if he delivers the full proof as promised, it will have to undergo years of scrutiny before it’s accepted by the Clay Mathematics Institute, the Peterborough, New Hampshire-based foundation that is offering the prize. Mathematical proofs often turn out to be incorrect. In one well-known example, British mathematician Andrew Wiles in 1993 offered a proof of another famous problem, Fermat’s Last Theorem, that turned out to contain a mistake. But he was able to correct the error, and he published the corrected version in 1995.

But considering the fact that every picture I find of the Math Monster Michael is him standing in front of a chalkboard, I’m pretty sure we can all agree to agree that he is definitely right and Riemann’s riddle has been solved.