Is there an error in there somewhere? AP/Press Association Images
It’s the stuff of Hollywood. Somebody somewhere is surely selling the movie rights to what’s become the biggest spat in maths: a misunderstood genius, a 500-page proof almost nobody can understand and a supporting cast squabbling over what it all means. At stake: nothing less than the future of pure mathematics.
In 2012, Shinichi Mochizuki at Kyoto University in Japan produced a proof of a long-standing problem called the ABC conjecture. Six years later the jury is still out on whether …
