A WAVE of excitement is tearing through mathematics as experts set about deciphering two dense and difficult papers. They contain a possible solution to a hundred-year-old puzzle on which a million dollars of prize money rests.
The prize is on offer from the Clay Mathematics Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for a proof of the notorious Poincaré conjecture. The money will be awarded if the proof withstands two years of scrutiny.
But that almost pales into insignificance compared with what else is being claimed – proof of a much broader statement called the geometrisation conjecture. That is a breakthrough which would…
