Stalking the Riemann Hypothesis

In 1998 the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute had a three-day conference on Mathematics and the Media. in Berkeley, Californiathe had a three day conference on Mathematics and the Media. The purpose of this conference was to bring together science writers and mathematicians to discuss ways to better inform the public about mathematics and new discoveries in mathematics. As part of the conference, they asked Peter Sarnak, from Princeton University, to talk about new results in mathematics that he felt the science writers might like to write about. He chose as his topic "The Riemann Hypothesis"This is generally considered the most famous unsolved problem in mathematics and is the major focus of Sarnak's research.

In his talk, Sarnak described some fascinating new connections between the Riemann Hypothesis, physics and random matrices. He used only mathematics that one would meet in calculus and linear algebra. Sarnak's lecture, and a discussion of his talk by the science writers, can be found here under "Mathematics for the Media"

These special editions of Chance News were meant to provide readers of Chance News with background information about chance in the primes to allow them to better appreciate Sarnac's very nice talk,