Winning A Million Dollars Through Solving A Math Problem

CBS News, The Osgood File

By Charles Osgood

April 4, 2002

Looking for a way to become a millionaire?

Mr. ARTHUR JAFFE: Essentially, the Riemann hypothesis says 'Prime numbers are distributed randomly, and you have to prove that that statement is true.' OSGOOD: That's it. If you can settle that classic math conundrum once and for all, you could win a million dollars. The story after this for Accountemps.

(Announcements)

OSGOOD: The idea of awarding a million dollars for solutions to a handful of classic mathematical problems has Harvard Professor Arthur Jaffe excited. He is also head of the nonprofit Clay Mathematics Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which has posted seven millennium prize problems on the internet. He has even written a little verse for the contest.

Mr. JAFFE: Crack one if you can of the seven that guard classic routes to math heaven.

OSGOOD: Cracking any of the seven unresolved questions will be extremely difficult. Some have gone unresolved for a century or more but Jaffe says just thinking about the problems may yield something worthwhile. Mr. JAFFE: These problems encourage people to look at long range questions which are deep and important, and we hope they'll encourage young people to think about mathematical questions and eventually to go into mathematics.

OSGOOD: 'Money is a great motivator,' says mathematician Matt Foreman who teaches at the University of California at Irvine.

Mr. MATT FOREMAN: Prizes like this, I think, gets attention to mathematics and portrays math as a very vibrant field of study in a world of ideas instead of kind of a cut-and-dried dusty area.

OSGOOD: Math is not pure abstraction. It's part of the world we all live in. It was a monetary prize that inspired Charles Lindbergh to fly solo across the Atlantic. Proving the Riemann hypothesis or any of the other math challenges is like that.

Mr. FOREMAN: It's the intellectual version of exploring a mountain range or landing on the moon. The difference is that the world one is exploring is an intellectual world rather than a physical world, but I think it is really the same level of adventure.

OSGOOD: So do the math. You too can be a millionaire.