At Age 67, Yitang Zhang Drops Another Number Theory Bombshell!

The fairytale continues… 🌈

Yitang Zhang (Image source: Wikimedia commons)

In 2013, Yitang Zhang instantly became one of the world’s most famous living mathematicians, when he proved the first finite bound on gaps between twin primes.

I liken his story to a fairytale for several reasons:

• Growing up during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, he was denied a proper high school education and had to teach himself mathematics in secret.
• After earning his PhD in America, he had trouble finding an academic position and had to support himself working odd jobs, at times even living out of his car!
• He was already 58 when he achieved his breakthrough, despite the tendency for pure mathematics to be a “young person’s game”.

The chart below shows the age at which many outstanding mathematicians made their groundbreaking contributions. You can see that at age 58, Zhang was already in the tail of the distribution. Now at 67, he is even more of an outlier!

Chart created by author (check out the interactive version of the chart in this article)

Zhang’s Bombshell: Landau-Siegel Zeros