lPro ogue
Why Your Car Never Seems to Be
Ready When They Promised
The $1 Million Questions
Every year a small collection of distinguished scientists, economists, liter-
ary giants, and humanitarians gather in Stockholm for the award of the
prestigious—and lucrative—Nobel Prizes, and nary a mathematician is
to be found among them. The question of why there is no Nobel Prize in
mathematics is a matter of some speculation; a popular but probably
apocryphal anecdote has it that at the time the Nobel Prizes were en-
dowed, Alfred Nobel’s wife was having an affair with Gustav Mittag-Lef-
f ler, a distinguished Swedish mathematician. Yes, mathematics has its
Fields Medal, awarded every four years, but it is awarded only to mathe-
maticians under forty. If you win it you are set for life, prestige-wise, but
you’re not going to be able to put your kids through college on the pro-
ceeds.
At the turn of the millennium, the Clay Mathematics Institute posted
seven critical problems in mathematics—and offered an unheard-of
$1 million for the solution of each. Some of the problems, such as the
Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture, are highly technical and even