Sam Raskin has wrapped his head around a math problem so complex it took five academic studies — and more than 900 pages — to solve.
The results are a sweeping, game-changing math proof that was decades in the making. Working with Dennis Gaitsgory of the Max Planck Institute and a team of seven other mathematicians, Raskin has solved a segment of the Langlands Conjectures, long considered a “Rosetta Stone” of mathematics.
The Langlands Conjectures, named after Canadian mathematician (and former Yale professor) Robert Langlands, suggested in the 1960s that deep, unproven connections exist between number theory, harmonic analysis, and geometry — three areas of math long considered distinctly separate. Proving these connections, mathematicians say, could suggest ways to translate certain areas of math that had seemed dissimilar.
If i remember well, bridging these different fields was also what led to the proof of Fermat's last theorem by Andrew Wiles.