A mathematician virtually unknown to the experts in his field — a
50-something lecturer at the University of New Hampshire named Yitang
Zhang gave a surprising shock the mathematical community a few months
back. He showed that there exists infinitely many primes with difference
equal to a a number around 70 million.
Recall that, twin prime conjecture says that there exist infinitely many prime pairs of the form $(p_1, p_2)$ where the difference between them is exactly 2. For example 11, 12; 17, 19 etc.
The result proved by Zhang assumes importance since there has not been any result so far suggesting that there can be a fixed constant maximum distance between two primes one can attain.
Read the interesting article about the achievement at https://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20130519-unheralded-mathematician-bridges-the-prime-gap/
There has been a lot of activity after the announcement of the result, and the gap has come down from 70 million to something else!
Read the rest of the story at https://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20131119-together-and-alone-closing-the-prime-gap/
Recall that, twin prime conjecture says that there exist infinitely many prime pairs of the form $(p_1, p_2)$ where the difference between them is exactly 2. For example 11, 12; 17, 19 etc.
The result proved by Zhang assumes importance since there has not been any result so far suggesting that there can be a fixed constant maximum distance between two primes one can attain.
Read the interesting article about the achievement at https://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20130519-unheralded-mathematician-bridges-the-prime-gap/
There has been a lot of activity after the announcement of the result, and the gap has come down from 70 million to something else!
Read the rest of the story at https://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20131119-together-and-alone-closing-the-prime-gap/
