In 2000, Faber and Faber offered a $1,000,000 prize to anyone who proved Goldbach’s conjecture: “Every even number greater than two is the sum of two primes”
To this day, it remains unsolved. The money was never claimed. And they never set a hard deadline. So, if you’re smart can you produce a proof for this?
Here is the original post captured in the web archive: http://www.faber.co.uk/faber/million_dollar.asp
Goldbach’s Conjecture was first stated in 1742 in a letter written by Christian Goldbach to the great Swiss mathematician Leonard Euler. The Conjecture is popularly represented as the conjecture that
Every even number greater than two is the sum of two primes
Although Euler spent much time trying to prove it, he never succeeded. For the next 250 years, other mathematicians would struggle in similar fashion. The proof has not been found to this day, and Goldbach’s Conjecture is acknowledged to be one of the most notoriously difficult problems in all of mathematics.
On 20 March 2000, Faber and Faber are publishing Uncle Petros and Goldbach’s Conjecture, the wonderful and already acclaimed novel by Apostolos Doxiadis. It has been described by John Nash, Nobel Prize Winner as ‘a fascinating picture of how a mathematician could fall into a mental trap by devoting his efforts to a too difficult problem’ and by George Steiner as ‘deeply generous. It allows the lay-reader lucid access to intrinsically closed worlds.’
To celebrate publication, we are offering a prize of $1million to any person who can prove Goldbach’s Conjecture within the next two years*
This challenge is issued in conjunction with Bloomsbury Publishing, USA, the book’s American publisher.
For further information on the publicity concerning the challenge, please call Judith Hillmore on 0171 465 7554 or e-mail her at [email protected]
Details of how to enter the challenge and of the book are available on the Faber and Faber website at www.faber.co.uk.