Mathematical Discovery Series
Queens College Mathematical Discovery Series is a new initiative of the Mathematics Department aimed at bringing the excitement of modern day mathematical research directly to the students. Our speakers are some of the most accomplished mathematicians of the 21st century and they come to Queens College to talk about their discoveries in a language that is accessible to undergraduate audience.
2022 – Yitang Zhang
The first speaker in the Queens College Math Discovery Series was Professor Yitang Zhang. In 2013 he stunned the mathematical world by proving the best result to date for the Twin Prime Conjecture. The conjecture (still open) states that there exist infinitely many pairs of primes that differ by 2. Weaker versions of it would assert that there exist infinitely many pairs of primes that differ by at most N=4 (so by 2 or by 4), or at most by N=6, etc. The larger the number, the weaker the claim. However, up until now this statement was not known to be true for any number N. In 2013, a completely unknown lecturer from University of New Hampshire (yes, Yitang Zhang was not a research professor then) made a breakthrough by proving that there exist infinitely many pairs of primes that differ by at most 70,000,000. It’s a big number, but a lot smaller than infinity! He was catapulted to fame and his life story was so incredible that a documentary was made about him “Counting from infinity”.
Here is the video of Prof. Yitang Zhang’s talk at Queens College on October 19, 2022.
