Controversy Over 140-Year-Old Math Problem

sciencehabit writes "British mathematician Darren Crowdy has been bragging all week about how he solved a 140-year-old math problem, as we discussed a few days ago. But three American mathematicians say they had the critical idea first."

Comments

Re:History Repeats

[jbeaupre]

Meet Archimedes http://physics.weber.edu/carroll/Archimedes/calculus.htm

It wasn't obvious until it was pointed out

[Alien54]

But mathematicians John Pfaltzgraff of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Thomas DeLillo and Alan Elcrat, both of Wichita State University in Kansas, say they had the basic strategy--and a formula--first.

Crowdy heard Elcrat talk about that work in 2003, but he says the American trio didn't realize the relevance of the Schottky groups.

The Americans' formula, published in 2004, involves the multiplication of an infinite number of terms, which goes haywire if the holes are too close together. Crowdy's formula replaces that product with an obscure beast known as Schottky-Klein prime function. Crowdy says his formula will never fail. "I'm very skeptical" of that claim, says Pfaltzgraff.

Basicaslly, the American Team was clueless until someone pointed out the obvious to them, now they want the credit. Fail.

Re:It wasn't obvious until it was pointed out

[c_jonescc]

Well, that is how Penzias and Wilson got a Nobel for CMB.

  They had no idea of the significance of their 3.5 Kelvin noise until it was pointed out to them - up to that point they'd been trying to get rid of it under the assumption that it was error.

Re:History Repeats

[Btarlinian]

Meet Archimedes http://physics.weber.edu/carroll/Archimedes/calculus.htm Sure Archimedes used integral calculus, just like many other Greek mathematicians. Other mathematicians had used differential calculus as well. But as far as we know, Newton and Leibniz were the first to formulate and prove the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus, the basic relationship between differential and integral calculus.