Understanding the Riemann Hypothesis: Why it's a high-stakes puzzle

Someone wrote a sci-fi story suggesting that anybody who proved the Hypothesis would be promptly murdered by a consortium of bankers

One of the most intriguing “open” prob­lems in mathematics is called the Rie­mann Hypothesis. This was a conjecture made by the great mathematician Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann (1826-1866) in a paper he wrote in 1859.

In 1900, another mathematician, David Hilbert, listed 23 important problems to be solved in the 20th century. One of these, the Riemann Hypothesis remains unsolved. In 2000, the Clay Mathematics Institute offered $1 million for anybody who proved the hypothesis.

In 2016, Kumar Eswaran, a physicist at the Sreenidhi Institute of Science and Tec­h­nology, Hyderabad, claimed a proof. And now in June 2021, news reports appeared saying