Stanford News Service Video
Stanford Report, February 22, 2006

Proof positive no longer possible in math theory; experts can certify, but computers do the work

Jack Hubbard

Keith J. Devlin, consulting Professor of Mathematics and executive director of the Center for the Study of Language and Information, has his own theory on math. For thousands of years, the "proof" of a theory could be written down and verified - dating all the way back the origins of Euclid's geometry. All that has changed now, and the mathematicians who do the numbers can't do it alone; they must rely on the computer to do the heavy lifting. Devlin says it is moving the once secure discipline into areas of the unprovable and unknown, much like physical sciences.

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