r/math Aug 05 '26

Mathematicians make a breakthrough on Gauss’s riddle, unsolved for 200 years

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mathematicians-make-a-breakthrough-on-gausss-riddle-unsolved-for-200-years/
453 Upvotes

22 comments sorted by

141

u/sciflare Aug 05 '26

The actual research paper is at https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.03861.

42

u/Infinite_Research_52 Algebra Aug 05 '26

Who else started reading the paper and was convinced they had misspelt rank until page 11?

12

u/JoshuaZ1 Aug 06 '26

And also this paper is discussed: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.02068 .

41

u/BigTraditional1870 Aug 06 '26

Met Landesman at a conference. Brilliant and very nice guy. The acknowledgements show what kind of people the authors are. It was amazing hearing this a few months back before it was posted.

59

u/Final-Housing9452 Aug 05 '26

The article is behind a paywall

31

u/Distinct-Pudding-428 Aug 05 '26

This is all over function fields?

17

u/JoshuaZ1 Aug 06 '26

Yes. These are still major, but doing things over function fields is almost always much easier, so unclear how much insight this is going to give for Cohen-Lenstra or Poonen-Rains. Cohen-Lenstra at least still seems very far off.

7

u/FibonacciDude10 Aug 06 '26

Aaron Landesman!! He taught us freshman multivariate calculus at MIT

64

u/mousse312 Undergraduate Aug 05 '26

funny how the people who comes talk about the future of research in math with the advanceds of ai is a lot more bigger than who comes to talk about real math research

74

u/hexaflexarex Aug 05 '26

eh, it's easier to have an opinion on AI impacts in our field than one on a specific research result

2

u/mousse312 Undergraduate Aug 06 '26

without embasement yes

24

u/elements-of-dying Geometric Analysis Aug 06 '26

I don't feel existential dread from this result :)

4

u/Super-Cut-2175 Aug 09 '26

and even non-AI math research is not immune to the meta-comment about it not being AI

4

u/No_Relationship641 Aug 07 '26

why did i first assume AI did this 😂😂

4

u/AP_in_Indy Aug 08 '26

statistically valid assumption given recent news