October 16, 2014. Harald Helfgott (CNRS – Paris VI/VII). The ternary Goldbach conjecture.

The ternary Goldbach conjecture (1742) asserts that every odd number greater than 5 can be written as the sum of three prime numbers. Following the pioneering work of Hardy and Littlewood, Vinogradov proved (1937) that every odd number larger than a constant C satisfies the conjecture. In the years since then, there has been a succession of results reducing C, but only to levels much too high for a verification by computer up to C to be possible (C>10¹³⁰⁰). (Works by Ramare and Tao have solved the corresponding problems for six and five prime numbers instead of three.) My recent work proves the conjecture. We will go over the main ideas of the proof.

List of talks at previous sessions of the seminar.