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Mochizuki ABC Proof to be Published

Eight years after Shinichi Mochizuki first posted his proof of the ABC Conjecture on his website it has been announced that it has been accepted for publication in Publications of the Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences (RIMS).

FryDay News Bulletin

Regular readers of The Aperiodical will not be surprised to hear that Hannah Fry is up to something exciting, but you will likely still be surprised by the sheer number of exciting things which Hannah Fry is currently doing. But this is why we are here after all, so here is your breaking FryDay news, hot off the presses.

Hedetniemi’s Conjecture in graph theory disproved

In Quanta Erica Klarreich recently wrote up Yaroslav Shitov’s new counter example which disproves Stephen Hedetniemi’s 50 year old conjecture, original dissertation, that the number of colors required to color the tensor product of two graphs is the lesser of the numbers used to color the original graphs. These colorings have applications in areas from scheduling to seating plans, and it is clear from Klarreich’s reporting that mathematicians are excited about this result. In fact, Hedetniemi responded very positively when asked by Klarreich about the counter example, saying it “has a certain elegance, simplicity and definitive quality to it.” The counter-example may show Hedetniemi’s conjecture is not true, but Klarreich points out that we do not yet know just how false it is. So, while Shitov has closed one door on this problem, there are still many which are open.

via Thomas Lin on Twitter.

One Mathematically Gifted and Black person every day this Black History Month

February is Black History Month in the USA, so the website Mathematically Gifted and Black is honouring a different black mathematician each day in February, for the third year.

Gerrymandering Gives Mathematics’s Moon a Day in the Sun

If you pay attention to United States politics you have probably noticed that mathematics is currently enjoying a rare moment of relevance. You probably also know this is not happening because all of a sudden politicians have decided that mathematics is clearly the coolest thing in the world, even though it clearly is, but instead because gerrymandering has become one of the major issues du jour.

Robert Schneider, Mathematical Musician/Musical Mathematician

(This article is based on an interview that was originally conducted for the podcast Relatively Prime)

Robert Schneider is a rock star mathematician. I do not mean that in the metaphorical sense, as when it is applied, with a rather unmathematical lack of precision, to celebrity mathematicians such as Terry Tao, Cedric Villani, or Timothy Gowers. I mean it in the most literal sense: Robert Schneider is a mathematician and Robert Schneider is a rock star.

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