Prime Time

Math Genius Who Figured Out ‘Twin Primes’ Property Maybe Also Made Your Tuna Sub

Now serving number five.
Now serving number five. Photo: NHU

Yitang Zhang couldn’t get a teaching job after receiving his Ph.D., and things got so dismal at one point that he even became a Subway sandwich artist in order to stay afloat. Earlier this year, the UNH lecturer hammered out a laconic and unprecedented proof describing the properties of twin primes — number pairs wherein any integer n and the integer n+2 are each prime — so that “some number N smaller than 70 million such that there are infinitely many pairs of primes that differ by N.” Wired has the in-depth explanation and context for the deep number theory implications of all this, but basically what this means is that Yitang Zhang should get a nice endorsement deal comparable to the one they gave Jared Fogle. You have to admit this kind of thing would make for really trippy commercials. [Wired]

Math Genius Who Figured Out ‘Twin Primes’ Property Maybe Also Made