The 2015-16 Serge Lang Undergraduate Lecture will be given on Wednesday, December 2, 2015 at 4:10PM in room 60 Evans Hall on the Berkeley campus. Our lecturer this year is Brian Conrad.
MUSA and the Department of Mathematics, University of California, Berkeley, present
The 2015-16 Serge Lang Undergraduate Lecture
Brian Conrad
Stanford University
The ABC Conjecture
Abstract: The ABC Conjecture, formulated in the mid-1980’s by Oesterlé and Masser, is one of the most important conjectures in number theory. It has many deep consequences, but its basic formulation can be given in entirely elementary terms. In fact, it is the focus of the second chapter of Serge Lang’s 1999 book “Math Talks for Undergraduates”.
In September 2012, a 500-page solution was announced by Shinichi Mochizuki (building on several thousand pages of work that he has carried out over the last 20 years). I will explain what the conjecture asserts, some evidence that supports it, a few of its consequences, and some of the circumstances surrounding the evaluation of the proof by the number theory community.