A Million Dollar Problem
An Insight into One of Mathematics Major Questions
With Mathematician Robert Osserman and other Real Live Mathematicians in person!
And A Mathematics Film Debut
Saturday, April 6, 2pm
McBean Theater

Inspired by A Beautiful Mind, the award winning, possible Oscar winning film about a Nobel Prize winning mathematician? Or by the Tony award winning play Proof, also about a mathematician; or the celebrated play Copenhagen, which walked the fine line between physics, mathematics and warring nations during World War II? It’s safe to say that math is hot, and even sexy. In the old millennium (pre-2000) it was the certain route to riches and fame. Find out more about it before the next high technology boom. The Exploratorium invites you to a talk by mathematician Robert Osserman on what is probably the most famous unsolved problem in mathematics — A Million Dollar Problem: Riemann and his Hypothesis. Robert Osserman’s talk — presented at a popular level — will be accompanied by the first public screening of a new short film about the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI), host to over 1400 mathematicians each year and a world resource located in Berkeley, CA. Mathematicians from the Institute, including Osserman, will be on hand to discuss their activities and the newly sexy lives of mathematicians.

This event is offered in conjunction with Mathematica: The World of Numbers And… Beyond, a major post-Sputnik era exhibition created by renowned designers Charles and Ray Eames, on view at the Exploratorium through May 5, 2002. This event is free with museum admission.

Riemann Hypothesis is as follows. Some numbers have the special property that they cannot be expressed as the product of two smaller numbers, e.g., 2, 3, 5, 7, etc. Such numbers are called prime numbers, as we all remember from high school, and they play an important role, both in pure mathematics and its applications. The distribution of such prime numbers among all natural numbers does not follow any regular pattern, through the German mathematician G.F.B. Riemann (1826 – 1866) observed that the frequency of prime numbers is very closely related to the behavior of an elaborate function called the Riemann Zeta function. The Riemann hypothesis asserts that all interesting solutions for his equation lie on a straight line. This has been checked ONLY for the first 1,500,000,000 solutions! A proof that it is true for every interesting solution would shed light on many of the world’s mysteries, as Dr. Osserman will reveal.