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Conference rusure::math

Title:Mathematics at DEC
Moderator:RUSURE::EDP
Created:Mon Feb 03 1986
Last Modified:Fri Jun 06 1997
Last Successful Update:Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:2083
Total number of notes:14613

16.0. "Press Reports" by LAMBDA::VOSBURY () Wed Jan 25 1984 19:01

Recently I've seen confused press reports from England about a guy who claims
to have a secret method for generating primes and a proof of Fermat's Last
Theroem.  Like Dr. Kronkheit's patient, "I'm dubious".  Does anyone have, or
can anyone direct me to, good information about this? 

Mike.
T.RTitleUserPersonal
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16.1RANI::LEICHTERJThu Jan 26 1984 04:2732
I've seen reports that he claims to have a general method of solution for
all kinds of problems, including specifically finding large primes (odd
claim, since other methods for this are know), solving Fermat's Last
Theorem (I don't know if he claims a proof or a disproof), and solving
the Three-body Problem.

The guy - who has a very strange name that escapes me - says he intends
to sell his technique, and so won't publish it.  Apparently most of the
American reports sprung from an All Things Considered article about him.
The report - which I missed; this is nth-hand - had some mathematician
(whose name was given; I didn't recognize it, and they didn't say much
about him) on who had been given a look at the guy's stuff, and claimed
it was good.  The guy himself has no formal mathematical background; it's
being claimed as a demonstration of what you can do if not blinded by
conventional approaches.

My main question about this whole thing is why anyone is taking him seriously
(to the point of international news coverage) at all on essentially no
positive evidence for very strong claims.  If he's right, he will revolu-
tionise mathematics; so would Norm Cohen....
							-- Jerry

(Norm Cohen used to - for all I know still does - print up pamphlets with
"proofs" of all sorts of strange things, mainly religious.  Typical proof:
Shuffle a deck of cards; deal them out.  The chance of the combination you
see arising is 1 in <52! written out>.  That's so unlikely it can be ignored;
so clearly God exists.  QED.  Cohen visited math and physics departments at
major universities, offering large rewards to anyone who could find a mistake
in his proofs.  As he was ignored at place after place, he kept adding to
an introduction to his pamphlets that explained his offer, and told you that he
had made the same offer at <list of universities>, and NO ONE had been able to
find any errors!			-- J)
16.2HARE::STANSun Jan 29 1984 21:379
I just got back from the joint AMS/MAA annual math convention where
I got to converse with a lot of mathematicians.
There was no word about these claims.  Apparently the mathematical
community does not take them seriously.

Quacks like this show up about once a year. (Proported "proofs"
of Fermat's Last Theorem show up at some universities more than
10 times per year.)  I wouldn't pay much attention until some
specific evidence is presented or a paper gets published.
16.3RAINBO::GREENWOODTue Jan 31 1984 18:4814
The guys name is Arnold Arnold. While I was in England a couple of
weeks ago I read two reports. The first in the Guardian (a national 
newspaper), on 13 Jan outlined his theory, and discussed why factoring 
large prime numbers is important in cryptography. The second in New 
Scientist disproved it. Being trained as an engineer I have only a
laymans interest in Mathmatics, and cannot really comment on either. 
(I got lost halfway through 'proof', the 'disproof' looked 
convincing).

You should be able to get hold of New Scientist in  a DEC library. If 
not, and you are interested I can give you some names of people in the 
UK who will be able to follow up.

Tim
16.4AURORA::FRASERSun Feb 05 1984 14:4028
Marginally more information on Arnold Arnold, from a Usenet net.ai posting
(probability of these claims turning out true has got to be miniscule):
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: net.ai
Path: decwrl!decvax!genrad!grkermit!masscomp!clyde!floyd!vax135!ariel!hou5f!hou5g!hou5h!hou5a!hou5d!hogpc!drutx!drux3!ihnp4!harpo!seismo!hao!hplabs!sri-unix!CC.Clive@UTEXAS-20.ARPA
Subject: Fermat's Last Theorem Proven?
Posted: Fri Jan 13 09:16:21 1984


From:  Clive Dawson <CC.Clive@UTEXAS-20.ARPA>

                [Reprinted from the UTEXAS-20 bboard.]

There was a report last night on National Public Radio's All Things Considered
about a British mathematician named Arnold Arnold who claims to have
developed a new technique for dealing with multi-variable, high-dimensional
spaces.  The method apparently makes generation of large prime numbers
very easy, and has applications in genetics, the many-body problem, orbital
mechanics, etc.  Oh yeah, the proof to Fermat's Last Theorem falls out of
this as well!  The guy apparently has no academic credentials, and refuses
to publish in the journals because he's interested in selling his technique.
There was another mathematician named Jeffrey Colby who had been allowed
to examine Arnold's work on the condition he didn't disclose anything.
He claims the technique is all it's claimed to be, and shows what can
be done when somebody starts from pure ignorance not clouded with some
of the preconceptions of a formal mathematical education.

If anybody hears more about this, please pass it along.
16.5HARE::STANMon Feb 13 1984 22:3649
From:	ROLL::USENET       "USENET Newsgroup Distributor" 11-FEB-1984 22:16
To:	HARE::STAN
Subj:	USENET net.math newsgroup articles

Newsgroups: net.math
Path: decwrl!decvax!harpo!ulysses!burl!clyde!watmath!csc
Subject: Arnold ** 2 and Idiotic News Coverage
Posted: Wed Feb  8 09:16:38 1984



   Recently (Jan 12)  the Guardian (London & Manchester) published an
article supporting claims by Arnold Arnold that he has solved Fermat's
Last Theorem, can generate primes of arbitrary size, and can factor
numbers of arbitrary size. Part of his "proof" of Fermat's Last Theorem
was given in the article.  Unsurprisingly, it was nonsense. (Arnold
appears to believe that Fermat's Last Theorem states that if 
a**2 + b**2 = c**2  then a**n + b**n not equal to c**n for n>2.  He then
makes a bad job of proving this trivial proposition.  Or maybe he is
doing something else, the presentation was VERY confusing.)  A retraction
of the claims was printed two weeks later and Science News had an article
in its Jan 19 issue purporting to disprove Arnold's "proof".
   
     What I find most interesting about this is not the addition of another
flawed proof to the scrap-heap of proofs  of Fermat, squarings of the circle
and trisections of the angle, but the incredibly shabby treatment the
mathematics community got from both publications.  The Guardian dismisses the
entire body of "conventional" (used by them in a derogatory sense)
mathematicians in a single sentence implying that they are too inflexible to
look at new methods. The authors of the article did not bother to obtain
any comment from an established mathematician, and when (after recieving a
quick education from outraged British academics) they published their retraction
they did not apologise for either insult!

     Even worse is the coverage in Science News.  They at least point out
that Arnold is wrong.  However the mathematics in their refutation is almost
as bad as Arnold's (their presentation is clearer so their blunders are
easier to see).  They claim that it is a reasonable assumption that an
integral root of an integer is rational!  Then they later state that they
have found a contradiction.  This statement would still be incorrect even
if their first idiotic assumption were right.  

  The most dismaying fact is that both of the above are
reasonably prestigous publications.  And what little (very little) coverage
of mathematics I've seen here suggests that the North American publications 
are no better.  Sigh! Back to the journals.


                                               William Hughes
16.6HARE::STANMon Feb 13 1984 23:425
I heard a rumor that Arnold Arnold offered to sell his "secrets"
to the NSA for $100,000.  If they didn't want it, he would sell it
to the Russians.

Anyone hear any confirming details?