Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture
Encyclopedia
1992 in literature
The year 1992 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-New books:*Ben Aaronovitch - Transit*Julia Álvarez - How the García Girls Lost Their Accents*Paul Auster - Leviathan*Iain Banks - The Crow Road...
novel by Greek author Apostolos Doxiadis
Apostolos Doxiadis
Apostolos Doxiadis is a Greek writer.Since his early years Doxiadis was drawn to mathematics and at the age of 15 he entered Columbia University in New York City to study maths...
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It concerns a young man's interaction with his reclusive uncle, who sought to prove that any even number greater than two is the sum of two primes, which is a famous unsolved mathematics problem called Goldbach's Conjecture
Goldbach's conjecture
Goldbach's conjecture is one of the oldest unsolved problems in number theory and in all of mathematics. It states:A Goldbach number is a number that can be expressed as the sum of two odd primes...
. This unusual novel discusses mathematical problems and some recent history of mathematics.
As a publicity stunt, the publishers (Bloomsbury USA in the U.S. and Faber and Faber
Faber and Faber
Faber and Faber Limited, often abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in the UK, notable in particular for publishing a great deal of poetry and for its former editor T. S. Eliot. Faber has a rich tradition of publishing a wide range of fiction, non fiction, drama, film and music...
in Britain) announced a $1 million prize for anybody who proved Goldbach's Conjecture within two years of the book's publication in 2000. Not surprisingly, given the difficulty of the problem, the prize went unclaimed.