The Elusive Goldbach Conjecture
Math has no shortage of famous problems that are difficult to prove. Even better are puzzles that are also simple to understand. Mathematicians are always looking for problems that are easy to state and hard to solve, as these problems often yield rich insights. Fermat’s Last Theorem took almost 300 years to solve after it was originally posed, and it is simple enough to be understood by the average middle school student.
For any n greater than 2, the equation xⁿ + yⁿ = zⁿ cannot be solved when x, y, and z are integers other than 0.
While Fermat’s Last Theorem has been proven, many similar problems still remain unsolved. These puzzles often generate a lot of interest in the mathematical community, and sometimes even cash prizes! In this article, I’m going to talk about another famous problem that is easy to state: The Goldbach Conjecture.
The Conjecture
The statement for this conjecture is very simple, it reads as follows:
Every even number greater than two can be written as the sum of two prime numbers
This conjecture was first stated by amateur Prussian mathematician Christian Goldbach in 1742 in a letter to Leonhard Euler. A conjecture is a statement that mathematicians pose and can either be proven true or false. In general, we think this conjecture…
