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thenewgreen  ·  3699 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: A new discovery about prime numbers and what it means for the future of math

    The stereotype, outmoded though it is, is that new mathematical discoveries emerge from the minds of dewy young geniuses. But Zhang is over 50. What’s more, he hasn’t published a paper since 2001. Some of the world’s most prominent number theorists have been hammering on the bounded gaps problem for decades now, so the sudden resolution of the problem by a seemingly inactive mathematician far from the action at Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford came as a tremendous surprise.
-I'm no mathematician, but it's nice to read that someone that is OVER 27 achieved this. I'm tired of the "under 30" crap. I'm making more interesting art now than I did when I was younger and I'd imagine that many scientists are doing more interesting work in their later career than their earlier.