Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture

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Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture by Apostolos Doxiadis

Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture is a 1992 novel by Greek author Apostolos Doxiadis.

It concerns a young man's interaction with his reclusive uncle, who sought to prove that every even number greater than two is the sum of two primes, a famous unsolved mathematics problem called Goldbach's Conjecture. This novel discusses mathematical problems and some recent history of mathematics.

As a publicity stunt, the publishers (Bloomsbury USA in the U.S. and Faber and Faber in Britain) announced a $1 million prize for anybody who proved Goldbach's Conjecture within two years of the book's publication in 2000. Not surprisingly, given the difficulty of the problem, the prize went unclaimed.[1][2]

The cover picture of the original edition is the painting I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold (1928) by Charles Demuth.

References[]

  1. ^ Book Review in Notices of the American Mathematical Society
  2. ^ Mathworld article on Goldbach's Conjecture, which mentions the unclaimed prize

External links[]


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