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I had recently arrived in Beijing when, in the hotel shower, I had an experience that was as
sudden and dramatic as unexpected thunder. I was exhilarated and scared at the same time.
Thankfully, the idea in the shower in Beijing proved to be correct. It concerned a problem that I
had devoted seven years of my work as a mathematician to. Other mathematicians had been
working on it for 30 years.
The idea concerned a highly specialised problem, and I won't be able to explain it here. What
I'm interested in is where these ideas come from, and how they fit into the way we solve
problems in mathematics.
I approach this through the lens of mathematics. I am not a psychologist, or a neurologist. I have
no idea how brains work.
Instead, I am basing my conclusions on my observations of mathematicians and the
mathematical community.
That ideas come out of nowhere is surely one of the most beautiful human
experiences.
The story I told you is an instance of the "eureka moment" — Archimedes was in the bath, I was
in the shower.
Most of us have had a similar experience — deep frustration while grappling with a problem or a
puzzle such as a crossword or a sudoku, followed by that sudden feeling of surprise when the
solution occurs to you.
About 50 per cent of mathematicians that I have consulted report having had this aha moment
experience. Whenever I talk to colleagues concerning eureka moments they report a similar
pattern.
Firstly, one has to work weeks, months or years without apparently progressing.
Then, if one is lucky, the idea comes during a period of relaxation, or while thinking of something
else.
A very interesting feature (to which a number of mathematicians attest) is a feeling a few days or
hours prior to the breakthrough that something is going on. It is almost as though one can hear
the rumblings of the unconscious prior to the appearance of the idea.
By way of explanation, the background details to my experience are a little more complicated
than I made out.
Firstly, prior to coming to Beijing I had been visiting a collaborator in Hong Kong. For eight days
straight, he asked me questions on this subject. He thinks about things in a very different way to
me.
Secondly, I was later surprised to realise that the idea had been staring me in the face for over a
year, quite literally.
When I returned to my office in Bonn, Germany I was shocked to see that a calculation I had
done over a year earlier with a good friend, Ben Elias, contained the germ of my idea — I had
stuck it up on the wall of my office.
Newton famously said "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants".
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channel.
This is truer today in mathematics than it ever has been. Consciously or unconsciously,
mathematicians have mapped out our landscape, with each mathematician responsible for
investigations in a particular corner of the landscape.
This idea began in 2009 when a well-known mathematician, Tim Gowers, asked 'Is massively
collaborative mathematics possible?' on his blog.
He followed up with a problem, asking his readers to suggest possible attacks, and document
partial progress.
The project was a success, leading to two new solutions of a difficult problem. There have been
16 polymath projects to date, four of which have led to a solution of the problem they set out to
solve.
Usually mathematicians go to great effort to hide the scaffolding of their ideas. However, in this
collaborative technique everything is laid bare. One can see all the false starts, the promising
ideas, and the dead ends of real research.
Here the problem concerned gaps between prime numbers. We think, but can't prove, that there
are infinitely many "twin primes". These are pairs of prime numbers that differ by 2 —like 3 and
5; 17 and 19; 41 and 43.
Computers searches easily find millions of such twin primes, however we still don't know that
there are infinitely many.
One can ask an apparently easier question: are there infinitely many prime numbers that differ
by at most 1,000, or 1 million, or 1 billion? Even this question evaded mathematicians for
centuries.
In 2013, Yitang Zhang, working alone, had a crucial breakthrough, showing that there are
infinitely many prime numbers separated by at most 70 million.
What followed was an explosion of work attempting to understand and extend his solution.
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A polymath project was formed, led by Australian Terry Tao, one of the best mathematicians in
the world.
You can still read the many false starts and attempts to understand in the comments on Terry
Tao's blog.
Every day the number got smaller. After several months, and hundreds of comments by
amateurs and experts alike, 70 million was down to 4680. At this point progress slowed.
Out of the blue, came an idea from James Maynard, working alone at the Universities of Oxford
and Montreal. With rather different ideas, he was able to lower 70 million down to 600.
Finally, Professor Maynard joined Professor Tao's collaborative polymath project, and the gap
was down to 246, were progress has since stopped.
I think this story nicely sums up how mathematicians work nowadays. We are social beings, and
much of our work is collaborative.
Yet still there is room for an individual working alone to have their eureka moment.
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