In 2013, a little known mathematician in his late 50s stunned the
mathematical community with a breakthrough on an age-old problem about
prime numbers. Since then, there has been further dramatic progress on
the problem, thanks to the efforts of a large-scale online collaborative
effort of a type that would have been unthinkable in mathematics a
couple of decades ago, and the insight and creativity of a young
mathematician at the start of his career.
Prime numbers have intrigued, inspired and infuriated mathematicians for
millennia. Every school student studies prime numbers and can appreciate
their beauty, and yet mathematicians' difficulty with answering some
seemingly simple questions about them reveals the depth and subtlety of
prime numbers.
Vicky Neale charts the recent progress towards proving the famous Twin
Primes Conjecture, and the very different ways in which the
breakthroughs have been made: a solo mathematician working in isolation
and obscurity, and a large collaboration that is more public than any
previous collaborative effort in mathematics and that reveals much about
how mathematicians go about their work. Interleaved with this story are
highlights from a significantly older tale, going back two thousand
years and more, of mathematicians' efforts to comprehend the beauty and
unlock the mysteries of the prime numbers.
