 |
| Towering minds: The American Institute of Math recently broke ground on its future digs, inspired by a Spanish castle. Courtesy of the American Institute of Math |
Chasing down zeros at math camp
In sessions at the American Institute of Math, geniuses munch food and crunch numbers, contemplating labyrinthine ideas.
from the July 30, 2007 edition
Page 3 of 3
In the meantime, they set up an interim shop in a plain, windowless space that was Fry's Electronics' first corporate headquarters and, in 1997, hired Mr. Conrey as executive director.
Conrey is a fit man with looks and charm that invite comparisons to Tom Brokaw. Unlike Mr. Brokaw, he is an analytic number theorist.
In nearly ten years, he has transformed the institute from an unknown, unfunded, vacant warehouse into a functional, comfortable setting that hums with math and has accrued support from donors including the National Science Foundation. "We've grown by factors of ten," said Conrey, being typically numeric. "We started with a $5,000 grant, and have built up to $5,000,000."
He has also built a program of five-year fellowships, awarded annually to "an absolutely first-rate PhD." And Conrey has put together a library of all the math papers he could lay his hands on – 100,000 and counting. Most of all, he works with David Farmer to bring in the best brains on the planet for week-long sessions. The idea is to foster group work and make connections – that math definition again – that will continue for months, years, or lifetimes.
Last March 19, one of these groups announced that they had hit the math jackpot. They'd solved a problem with a mystical-sounding name, "the exceptional Lie group E8." It took a platoon of 18 mathematicians four years – and two of those years were spent just realizing it could be solved. The team also needed 77 hours of a supercomputer named Sage, which did much of the grunt work – namely, the 204 billion entries that form the result. Writing it would require a piece of paper the size of Manhattan.
Even if the Riemann Hypothesis were the only focus of this week's group of 28, actual results would still take the mathematicians a great deal of time. "One year after the workshop, we'll e-mail them and that's when we find out what they've been up to" says Farmer.
Still, a half-dozen papers are likely to come out of this week of chasing zeros. And one day, Riemann will fall. Fear not, though: The institute will soldier on. "The Riemann Hypothesis is just the first of an enormous list of functions," said Farmer, "all of which need proving."
RSS feed
