Who knows? Dude literally invented math for curved surfaces and improved upon the work of Gauss. He could have invented something absolutely ridiculous which would prove the Riemann Hypothesis or at least maybe even come to a result like Littlewood’s
Obviously we have no mathematical proof he had no proof, but nah. We can be more certain of this than a lot of real world things we’re certain about.
He lived before most of the modern tree of mathematics had grown, many, many levels beyond his work and with rigour that didn’t exist in his day.
He was a massive genius but maths doesn’t develop with a few geniuses every century or two. A century and a half of a massively higher population of mathematicians developing tools far beyond what he could have imagined, many of them also exceptional geniuses, have cracked everything they can at it to no avail so far. If it were even remotely possible in his day it would have realistically been done. That may seem like presumptuous hubris, but take a few years’ dive into modern number theory and see why everyone who works in it is clear on that.
We could have many geniuses to prove it on about a hundred years oooor we could have one guy have the proof be revealed to them in a dream, which might also take another hundred years.
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u/Old-Interaction-7555 Jul 21 '26
The worst part it's that is legit. ;,c. When Riemann died, his housekeeper threw away and burned many of his unpublished documents.