The Prime Number Conspiracy

Quanta Magazine's stories of mathematical explorations show that "inspiration strikes willy-nilly," revealing surprising solutions and exciting discoveries. These stories from Quanta Magazine map the routes of mathematical exploration, showing readers how cutting-edge research is done, while illuminating the productive tension between conjecture and proof, theory and intuition.The stories show that, as James Gleick puts it in the foreword, "inspiration strikes willy-nilly." One researcher thinks of quantum chaotic systems at a bus stop; another suddenly realizes a path to proving a theorem of number theory while in a friend's backyard; a statistician has a "bathroom sink epiphany" and discovers the key to solving the Gaussian correlation inequality.Readers of The Prime Number Conspiracy, says Quanta editor-in-chief Thomas Lin, are headed on "breathtaking intellectual journeys to the bleeding edge of discovery strapped to the narrative rocket of humanity's never-ending pursuit of knowle